LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

ffljjajt* i oj^i ' Iflljl Ifta 

Shelf..i.W4 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



ESSAYS, 
REVIEWS, AID DISCOURSES. 



BY 



DANIEL D. WHEDON, D.D., LL.D., 



Author of "The Freedom of the Will," "Commentary on 
the New Testament," etc. 



WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



THE REV. J. S. WHEDON, M.A., 



THE REV. D. A. WHEDON, S.T.D. 



NEW YORK: 
PHILLIPS & HUNT. 

CINCINNATI: 
CRANSTON & ST OWE. 
1887. 




BY HIS SON, 



AND HIS NEPHEW, 





Copyright, 1887, by 
PHILLIPS & HUNT, 
New York. 



PREFACE. 

o<x> 



Much of the late Dr. "Whedon's writings, published 
in the Methodist Quarterly Review and elsewhere, 
is of permanent value, but a large part of it is inac- 
cessible to most of the present generation, and espe- 
cially to the younger ministers, students, and thinkers 
of the Church. The project of collecting the more 
important of them in a separate form has received 
wide approval, and some of the warmest expressions 
have come from friends to whom he was personally 
unknown. It is only to be regretted that the work 
proved too severe for his waning strength, compell- 
ing him to commit its execution to his son and 
nephew. 

The plan of two volumes, with a brief biography, 
is adopted, at the joint suggestion of Dr. Curry and 
the publishers. 

The present volume.contains the longer pieces, and 
of those only such as the author most esteemed. A 
companion volume, entitled, Statements : Theological 
and Critical, comprises the briefer, but equally 
valuable, discussions, systematized and appropriately 
ai ranged. 



4 



Preface. 



Neither a college nor an editorial chair furnishes 
much material for a biography, however largely its 
occupant may influence the thought of his time. Dr. 
Whedon was, through his infirmity, known to the 
world for twenty-five years chiefly through his pen. 
We have sought, in simple narrative, to make him 
known as a man, and as we knew him, allowing others 
to characterize and assign him his place. 

J. S. W. 
D. A. W. 



CONTENTS, 



PAGE 

Biographical Sketch 7 

Arminianism and Armlnius 50 

Akmlnias View of The Fall and Redemption 78 

Saint Paul's Closing P.ean 103 

Doctrines of Methodism 109 

Fundamental Maxim of Divine Government 110 

Free- Will Ill 

Divine Sovereignty 114 

Divine Prescience and Predeterminations 115 

Foreknowledge 118 

Doctrine of Sin and Guilt 120 

The Fall and Depravation of Man 122 

The Redemption 126 

Righteousness and Grace in the Redemption 129 

Nature and Extent of the Atonement 130 

Justification by Faith 131 

Possibility of Apostasy 134 

Regeneration 136 

Witness of the Spirit 138 

Election and Reprobation 139 

Immutability of the Law 140 

Entire Sanctification, or Christian Perfection 141 

Perpetuity of Man's Free Agency 144 

Conclusion 145 

Inorganic Methodism 146 

Methodist Episcopacy 15*7 

Ordination Historically at the Basis of the Church 157 

Wesley's Ordination of Coke his Grandest Executive Act ... 158 
The General Conference may not Abolish Episcopal Ordina- 
tion or Limit Episcopal Tenure 159 



6 



Contents. 



PAGE 

The Wesleyan Axiom of no Prescribed Form of Church 



Government 165 

Bishops and Elders Essentially one Order 167 

The Significance of Orders 170 

Wesley's Idea of Three Orders 171 

Wesley Intended Coke's Ordination 174 

Wesley's Purpose of a Methodist Episcopal Church in En- 
gland 177 

Our Theory and Practice Consistent 179 

Wesley's Idea Framed into the Restrictive Rule . . 182 

The Office has the Four Attributes of an Order 184 

Methodist Episcopacy neither Prelacy nor Presbyterianism . . 188 

Authorities Contradicting the Practice of the Church 189 

Did Wesley hold the Third Ordination to be Essential to the 

Bishop or Superintendent 191 

Consecration versus Ordination 192 

Our Episcopacy a Powerful Executive Force 194 

Substitutional Atonement 197 

The Double Baptism 216 

I. Real Baptism 217 

II. Symbolical Baptism 230 

God as Discernible in the Phenomena of the World 249 

Review of Haeckel's Atheism. 260 

Prater and Science 269 

The Christian Citizen's Political Duties 289 

The Christian Week and Sabbath - 313 

McDonald on Spiritualism 323 

The Resurrection 328 

The Great Physician's Anodyne 342 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



Daniel Denison Whedon was born in Onondaga, 
in the State of New York, on the 20th day of March, 
1808. His parents were Daniel Whedon and Clarissa 
Root. He was the youngest of a family of eight chil- 
dren, of whom only three, brothers, survived to adult 
years, and they reached old age. His name, Daniel, has 
belonged to five successive generations ; Denison, from 
his paternal grandfather, to four ; and the combined 
Daniel Denison has been bestowed upon a son and two 
grandsons. Respecting his ancestry he does not seem 
to have been sufficiently anxious to lead to much expen- 
diture of time and zeal in tracing it. " My family," he 
once said in a college oration, u is as old as the Duke 
of Buckingham's, only I have lost my pedigree." It is 
known, however, that it was of good English stock, 
and is traceable in this country through more than two 
centuries. In 1657 Thomas Whedon came from England 
to New Haven, in the State of Connecticut, and, about 
two years later, removed to the neighboring town of 
Branford, where he became one of the founders of the 
Congregational Church in that place. From him the 
line of descent runs through six generations, in Bran- 
ford, Westfield, Mass., Hebron, and Onondaga, N. Y., 
to the subject of this sketch. They were mostly farm- 
ers, some of them achieving local distinction and wealth ; 
one, Denison Whedon, proving his patriotism by enter- 
ing the army in our revolutionary struggle, but none 



8 



Biographical Sketch. 



attaining the eminence or wide usefulness that crowned 
his life. 

We find young Daniel at ten years of age in Salina, 
since annexed to Syracuse, which had then no name and 
was known as " t'other settlement." He speaks of him- 
self here as a " lamb in the pastoral flock of Dr. Caleb 
Alexander," a Presbyterian clergyman, and one of the 
founders of Hamilton College. " Dr. Alexander," he 
says, " established in his flock the then brand-new in- 
vention of a Sunday-school, intended to make us all 
good boys and girls, to which end I think it greatly 
conduced. I remember that once, when the congrega- 
tion was passing out of the church, he momentarily laid 
his hand upon my head and said, 1 Are you going to 
be a minister ? ' That laying on of hands proved a sort 
of 1 fore-ordination.' " Nevertheless, from infancy he 
had been under such Methodist training as the circuit 
system of that early day afforded. His mother and 
eldest brother were members of the Church, and the 
former was one of the women who used to " pray and 
speak in meeting." The names of George Peck, Charles 
Giles, George Harmon, George W. Densmore, Tim- 
othy Dewey, John Dempster and Zechariah Paddock, 
all men of renown, were, he says, " familiar to the ears 
of my boyhood and young manhood." He was a 
thoroughly conscientious boy, doubtless truly endeavor- 
ing to serve God. His mother is remembered to have 
spoken of him as having been converted at the age of 
nine years, and then, in his scrupulousness thinking it 
wicked for him to play ball with his boyish friends. 
In maturer years he held a different and better opinion. 
Perhaps, after all, he had little disposition for play. 
He was fond of books, and was really good for little 
else. If set to a task or sent on an errand, he would 
often fall into a brown study and forget it. The story 



Biographical Sketch. 9 

was told in the family, that once having been sent to the 
well for a kettle, he reached the well, and, already 
oblivious of his errand, slowly walked around it two or 
three times, and then as slowly returned to the house 
to be roused from his dream by the sharp question of 
his mother, who had been watching the performance, 
" Where is your kettle ? " He devoured all the books 
his home possessed and all he could borrow, and, as he 
said to one of his sons, by the time he was fourteen he 
had mastered most of the English classics. It was clear 
that with his strong inclination to study, and indis- 
position to business, life would be to him a failure 
except in a learned profession. It was decided that he 
should become a lawyer. He was, therefore, placed 
under the instruction of Mr. Oliver C. Grosvenor, at 
Rome, with whom he remained until, at eighteen years 
of age, he entered the Junior class of Hamilton College, 
at Clinton, N. Y. Of that entrance, and of his college 
life, we will let him tell the story, as found in his 
"Annalist's Letter," written when he was seventy-two, 
for the annual meeting of the Hamilton Alumni : 

" I well remember the sunny morning, when going 
from Rome to the Hamilton College Commencement 
previous to my admission, I first caught a glimpse of 
the college buildings crowning the summit of Clinton 
Hill. To my young, ambitious eyes they were a vision 
of ' beauty,' and the fresh memory of that young emo- 
tion is a 'joy' to the brief 1 forever ' of my life. At the 
commencement I was impressed with the sublimity and 
range of President Davis's opening prayer, and also with 
the scholastic dignity with which, in antique tri-cocked 
hat, seated on the stage, he expanded his palms, and 
pronounced the Pro auctoritate commissa wherewith he 
transformed the discipulus into a baccalaureus f Vaca- 
tion passed, and I presented myself a trembling candi- 



10 



Biographical Sketch. 



date for the Junior class. My preparation had been 
slightly unique. I had in languages read through Vir- 
gil entire, from the first ' Tityre tic ' to the close of the 
JEneid ; also Horace (Delphin edition) entire, from 
' Maecenas atavis^ to the closing syllable of i De Arte 
Poetical In Greek, I had read the entire New Testa- 
ment and the ' Grseca Majora,' by the aid of Schrevel- 
ius's Greek-Latin Lexicon, never having seen a Greek- 
English Lexicon until after entering college. Under 
examination in languages, by the amiable Professor Mon- 
teith, I was triumphant and jubilant. But when Pro- 
fessor Strong, with his stocky frame, heavy brows, and 
black, brilliant eyes, began to probe me mathematically, 
it was a crisis. The fact was, I had crammed my two 
years of mathematics into a little more than three 
months, and my cram was in a highly undigested state. 
In the midst of my trial the sympathetic Monteith 
interposed his intimation that enough was done. ' O, I 
have just begun,' responded the monster Strong, and let 
himself loose upon me again with an onslaught which put 
me to the desperate top of my faculties, and made me pre- 
ternaturally successful. Passing that ordeal, I crossed the 
campus to Dr. Davis's residence, and, ascending a flight of 
outside paintless stairs, entered the president's study. He 
of the tri-cocked hat stood before me, impressing me 
again as the natural scholastic dignitary. His tall and 
rather gracefully slender figure, his crown of mellow 
snow, his rich intonations and kindly manner, all inspired 
me with a grateful reverence I have never lost. It is 
one of my pleasant recollections that two years after- 
ward the parting address of sympathy, presented to him 
by my graduating class, was written by me. . . . As an 
inmate of his house and at his table for months, I can 
testify to the genuine dignity and piety of the man." 
Mr. Whedon was graduated in 1828, at the age of 



Biographical Sketch. 



11 



twenty; but so severely had he treated himself that it was 
with health impaired, from which he suffered till the end 
of his life. He then entered upon the study of law in 
Rochester, with Judge Chapin, and, later, " briefly stud- 
ied" with Alanson Bennett, Esq., at Rome,finding a home 
with his eldest brother, Hiram. It was here, while he 
was thus engaged, that the great event occurred which 
changed his whole future life. In his college life he had 
not wholly escaped skeptical questionings. " The train- 
ing of the writer of these lines," he afterward wrote, 
"w T as in the mental and moral philosophy of Locke and 
Paley as text authors. Their influence on his mind was 
fearfully deleterious. Locke's derivation of our ideas 
primitively from matter through sensation ; secondarily, 
frofti the mind's operating upon those sensations, was 
to him rife with materialism, with atheism. It was im- 
possible for him to escape the conclusion that all our 
thoughts were but impressions from a material object 
upon a material sensorium, and then material impres- 
sions again of those material impressions, and so on. 
Let two mirrors shed their reflections into each other in: 
row, and you have the very image of the thing. From 
Paley he understood that right and wrong are mere 
creatures of education. He was from all this, to his 
own mind, a theoretic Christian only by being a bad 
logician. After such a cramped process he found the 
revival of the larger old philosophy of Cudworth and 
Henry More, though modified and christened with the 
modern epithet transcendental, to be a relief to his 
suffocated soul." This relief came at a later day. For 
the present, however much perplexities of thought dis- 
turbed him, they did not destroy his faith in religion. 
The spiritual life of his boyhood had, indeed, been lost. 
The sudden death of Thomas Addis Emmet, while con- 
ducting a case in the United States Court, not only 



12 



Biographical Sketch. 



shocked, but powerfully aroused and impressed, him 
while yet in college. And now, while the study of the 
great principles of the law was entirely congenial, its 
petty practice, as it had already disclosed itself before 
him in his young apprenticeship, " disgusted " him. A 
mind that spontaneously turned to the discussions of 
Locke, Paley, and Blackstone, could naturally find little 
delight in a squabble over a spavined horse. It was at 
this point in his history that the Rev. Charles G. Fin- 
ney visited Rome as an evangelist, under whose power- 
ful preaching he was led to Christ. Then and there he 
surrendered himself to him, as his supreme Lord, for a 
life-long service, and in the fidelity of that consecration 
he never wavered. So radical was the alteration in his 
feelings that he never entered the law-office again. * 

This sudden and unexpected change in the life-plan 
of Mr. Whedon was a sore disappointment to his father, 
who had anticipated for him a successful career at the 
bar. It, moreover, put him to a severe test. He had 
closed one door of employment; would another open? 
His health was frail ; what could he do ? And what 
would be given him to do ? Months of patient wait- 
ing followed. In becoming a Methodist, while at 
the same time following family affiliations, he acted 
from the profoundest convictions. "My own per- 
sonal ancestry," he once said, "originally Calvinistic, 
became Methodist. My own boyhood and young man- 
hood witnessed and shared the fervor of the battle." 
We shall see hereafter the terrible struggles of his soul 
over the Calvinistic theory of necessity, but at this pe- 
riod the pulpit polemics of the time had made him 
familiar with the points in dispute. In the Methodist 
preaching of that day, as he described it forty years 
later, " the doctrine of free-will (disburdened of neces- 
sity or predestination) flung all the responsibility of sin 



Biographical Sketch. 



13 



on the sinner; the doctrine of unlimited atonement 
(disburdened of partial reprobation) opened free salva- 
tion for all; the doctrine of ' gracious ability ' encour- 
aged and brought the sinner to faith ; the doctrine of 
the witness of the Spirit led the convert to communion 
with God ; the possible apostasy wanted him to maintain 
the constant assurance of a present salvation ; the doc- 
trine of entire sanctification inspired him to whole-souled 
effort for the attainment of every height of holiness." 

It was "this emancipation of the Gospel, and of the 
sinner from all fatalistic shackles — this glad proclama- 
tion of a free, a full, and a perfected salvation from sin," 
that won his judgment, as well as his heart, and made 
him a Methodist. He at once united, on probation, with 
the Methodist Episcopal Church in Rome, of which the 
Rev. Andrew Peck, a brother of the late Bishop Peck, 
was the pastor. "It is," says the historian of the local 
Methodism, "no small honor to any church to have on its 
roster such a name as D. D. Whedon." lie became a 
teacher in the Sunday-school. On a visit of some weeks 
with a family friend he found in the house Dugald 
Stewart's " Philosophy of the Human Mind," and rev- 
eled in its study. But at length the period of waiting 
came to an end, and, in the summer of 1830, he became 
teacher of Greek and Mental Philosophy in the Oneida 
(now Central New York) Conference Seminary, at 
Cazenovia, of which Augustus W. Smith, afterward 
professor and president at Middletown, was Principal. 
Among his pupils were Jesse T. Peck, Erastus Went- 
worth, Bostwick Hawley, Henry Bannister, Benjamin 
F. Tefft, and others, whose names have since become 
known throughout the Church. 

At Cazenovia Mr. Whedon received license to 
preach, although some members of the Quarterly Con- 
ference, it is said, hesitated on the ground that he was 



u 



Biographical Sketch. 



so physically frail that he would never make a Meth- 
odist preacher. And, indeed, it may be that a year or 
two of the horseback circuit system, then prevalent, 
and the free, open air would have been for him in 
every way better than the confinement of the recita- 
tion room. He preached occasionally in the school- 
houses in the vicinity, and on one occasion it was told 
among the students that one of their number had over- 
heard him in a grove rehearsing his sermon. After a 
year at Cazenovia he was, in 1831, called to a tutorship 
in Hamilton College, at which time he took his Master's 
degree in course. 

Of that occasion the " Annalist's Letter," already 
mentioned, thus speaks: 

" Three years after my graduation I was appointed 
to fill out the commencement exercises by delivering a 
' Master's Oration,' an honor which I shared with the 
valedictorian of our class, Leicester A. Sawyer. After 
receiving my Master's degree, I was called upon the 
stage by the president, with a touch above ascendat 
videlicet Norton [a hit at some allusion in the paper of 
his classmate, Judge Norton], but ascendat videlicet 
Dominus Whedon. That announced to the world that 
I was no longer a mere baccalaureus, but a dominus. 
After being delivered of my oration [the subject of 
which was 4 The Eccentricities of Genius'], I descend- 
ed and locked arms with Pease [his classmate] for a 
walk, remarking, ' I feel better now that it is over.' 
' Yes,' quoth Pease, 1 you have got the trash onV In 
my oration I had used the phrase, 4 a diploma from 
Bedlam,' considering it a pretty smart stroke. But 
unfortunately, in the course of our walk, we met a 
friend who complimented my speech and predicted a 
future D.D. at the other end of my name, which gave 
Pease a chance to respond, ' It must be a diploma from 



Biographical Sketch. 



15 



Bedlam ' . . . . My fellow orator, Sawyer, I had known 
during our under-graduate days as a fine scholar, a de- 
voted Christian, a fluent, if not very original, speaker, 
and should have, without doubt, predicted for him a 
distinguished career in the ranks of a correct and grace- 
ful orthodoxy. How little did I forecast that he could 
become a heroic iconoclast. As little could he have 
forecast my real career. Nor, in all my own day- 
dreams or night-dreams of my own future, did the 
thought ever dawn upon me that it was written in the 
books that I was a predestinated commentator." 

Of him as tutor, the Hon. Thomas Allen Clarke, 
LL.D., of Albany, an alumnus of Hamilton and one 
of his students, thus speaks: "Tutor Daniel D. Whe- 
don was full of poetry, with great subtleness of intellect; 
his imagination played around every subject with en- 
joyment to himself and his pupils. He was fond of the 
alliterative. I can remember how he would engage in 
our sports without disrespect from us, and return to his 
duties refreshed and invigorated." 

Though in a Presbyterian college Mr. Whedon never 
forgot that he was a Methodist. When it became 
known that he had authority to preach, his services 
were frequently sought, particularly at Lairdsville and 
Manchester, prominent appointments on the old West- 
moreland Circuit. " It was a great treat in those early 
days," says Dr. Jacob Hunt, of Utica, " to hear a 
Methodist preacher, a college graduate, of so fine cult- 
ure and piety. Some of the most intelligent people in 
the vicinity were converted and joined the Church. I, 
then a young school-teacher and member of the Church, 
was greatly strengthened and encouraged by his preach- 
ing and counsel." He found great delight in the society 
of these Westmoreland Methodists. With one of them 
in particular, the Rev. Isaac L. Hunt, a school-teacher 



16 



Biographical Sketch. 



getting ready to go to Cazenovia, who often visited 
him at the college, he formed an intimate friendship 
that was interrupted only by death. 

After a year and a half of tutorship, Mr. Whedon 
was, in January, 1833, elected Professor of Ancient 
Languages and Literature in Wesley an .University, 
which had been opened in 1831, and was then our only 
Methodist college. That he gladly accepted the 
position as one of promotion is doubtless true, but a 
remark to his friend Hunt, "I shall soon have the 
pleasure of being placed under the influence of that 
master-spirit, Dr. Fisk," gives us a precious glimpse of 
the feeling with which he turned his steps eastward. 
"February found him at his new post, ready for 
his duties with the beginning of the college term. At 
the ensuing commencement, the first class was grad- 
uated, and, as a part of the exercises of the day, the 
"Professor-elect, Daniel D. Whedon," delivered his 
inaugural address, taking for his subject, "The 
Classics." It thus fell out that the earliest graduates 
of the university came under his instruction. Of this 
first class of six, no less than four had come from his 
own Hamilton, from a desire to attend a college of 
their own denomination. 

The influence of Professor Whedon upon his stu- 
dents was strongly marked from the beginning. He 
had reached the object of his then highest earthly 
ambition, a professor's chair in a Methodist college. 
He was young, only twenty-four, and younger than 
some of his students. Enthusiastic, he sought to in- 
spire them with his own spirit. A thorough linguist, 
he would, if possible, make them partakers of his 
knowledge. Patient with the dull, if faithful, student, 
he knew how to be terrible with the indolent and care- 
less. His sharp discriminations, keen wit, bright 



Biographical Sketch. 



17 



pleasantries and merciless sarcasms, well-known and 
appreciated at the time, still linger among the tra- 
ditions of Wesleyan. Bishop Gilbert Haven nsed to 
tell of his saying to a Greek class, " Gentlemen, the 
perfect tense always denotes a finality. When Pilate 
said to the Jews, O yeypacpa yeypcMpa, that ended the 
matter." Judge Robert C. Pitman, in a published 
letter, thus speaks of him: " Our professor had but to 
open his mouth and a sense of power came to us all. 
We did not ask whether we liked him. We were at 
once proud of him. He sometimes cut like steel — but 
it was so bright and polished steel that it left no irri- 
tation. How I recall his very words. To a blunderer 
he exclaimed, ' Take heed, thou shalt do no murder.' 
To one rashly paraphrasing the perfect odes of Horace 

he said, 'No little elegancies of your own, Mr. , 

if you please.' He extinguished one day an incor- 
rigible who had exhausted his patience by blandly 
remarking, 'I may as well mention one little peculiar- 
ity of your translations — you never seem to have the 
slightest sense of the meaning of your author! ' But it 
was not necessary for him to use many words ordinarily 
to convey to a student the verdict he rendered upon 
his performance. The turn he gave to the simple word 
4 Next ' when the student had finished, which no one 
who ever heard it can forget, showed whether he was 
chuckling with delight over a clever translation, merely 
indifferent at an ordinary recitation, or. suppressing with 
difficulty his critical wrath at a job of mangling." 

Our professor was a courteous gentleman of the old 
school, ever instinctively mindful of the proprieties, 
whether in college or in social life. He would touch 
his hat as gracefully to the greenest Freshman as 
to the lady of the president. If his words were 
on occasions stinging, they were also courteous. 
2 



18 



Biographical Sketch. 



A few students, guilty of a serious indiscretion, were 
one day summoned before the Faculty to " recant," as 
the former put it, or, in the gentler phrase of the latter, 
to " acquiesce in the opinion of the Faculty " respecting 
the affair. After some useless argument with a vol- 
uble Junior, the professor turned to a Sophomore in 
the group. Junior, attempting a reply in Sophomore's 
stead, was cut short by his saying, with the utmost 
suavity of tone and manner, " I addressed my remark 

to Mr. ; I prefer to speak with a gentleman who 

has more thoughts than words." It is needless to say 
that Junior was extinguished, or that the silence was 
profound. Yet he was one of the most joyous of 
men. He could tell a story, crack a joke, or make a 
pun, and laugh with the heartiest, with all the abandon 
of a boy. So it was to the end. Yet he never joked or 
punned on a sacred subject ; if others did it in his 
presence, he would not laugh. It was offensive to him. 
He was conscientious and reverent to a marked degree. 
He would not read a classic author on Sunday. Once 
finding a friend so doing, he said to him, "Put up that 
old heathen!" And long after he became unable to 
hear a word of the sermon or prayers he was, when his 
health permitted, habitually in attendance upon the 
Sabbath services of the Church. 

Professor Whedon's association with President Fisk 
was to him most gratifying. Perhnps he never felt 
for any other man so high an admiration or so 
warm an affection. Notwithstanding their difference 
in years, their friendship amounted to an intimacy. 
They were remarkably harmonious in sentiment. In 
Dr. Fisk's Calvinistic controversy, the professor was 
his trusted and sympathetic counselor. " I learned more 
theology from Dr. Fisk," said the latter, "than from 
any other man." ^They thought alike on the great 



Biographical Sketch. 



19 



questions of Negro slavery, African colonization, 
and the abolition agitation. And when the doctor, 
who had declined the Episcopacy in the belief that he 
could be more useful in the educational work of the 
Church, was called to his reward on high, it was his 
friend, the professor, who was summoned by the Young 
Men's Missionary and Bible Societies of New York to 
pronounce his eulogy. The Tribute to the Memory of 
President Fish is, perhaps, the most tender and one of 
the most eloquent productions of his pen. 

Professor Whedon joined the New York Conference 
on trial in 1834, and in due course was admitted into 
full connection. He was ordained deacon by Bishop 
Hedding, and elder by Bishop Andrew. His reputation 
as a pulpit orator soon became as high as was that of 
his qualities as an instructor. " He was very popular 
among us," says Dr. B. K. Peirce, "and his rare ad- 
dresses and sermons were greatly appreciated. Even 
his peculiar enunciation, especially when giving a rich 
emphasis to his keen wit, gave an additional charm to 
his conversation and discourse." Bishop Gilbert Haven 
gives a like but fuller expression: "As a preacher, he 
was a great favorite with the students; he was rich and 
rare; he thought out his sermons. He shone in clear- 
ness, freshness, potency of thought, and richness of ex- 
pression, that were unsurpassed and unequaled even by 
such mighty masters of the pulpit as Fisk and Olin. 
It was a treat to the hard-hearted, sharp-witted student 
when the tall thin form of this master of logic, rhetoric, 
and sarcasm stood behind the little chapel desk. The 
same rare eloquence was fully appreciated in many a 
country church in the vicinity of the college, and the 
best congregations of our cities hung delighted on his 
lips." He was as ready to preach in the country church 
as he was in the chief pulpits of New York, where he 



20 



BlOGKAPHICAL SKETCH. 



was in those days most warmly welcomed. And to his 
labors may be ascribed the founding of a church half a 
dozen miles from the college, in speaking of which he 
would pleasantly style himself " Bishop of Durham," 
a thoroughly unprelatical episcopate and the highest 
he ever desired. 

Those who have known Dr. Whedon only in the com- 
pact statements and logic of " The Will," or in the later 
editorial condensations of a volume into a page, in 
which he seems almost intolerant of words, except the 
fewest possible for the expression of his meaning, would, 
perhaps, hardly suspect, unless from an occasional pas- 
sage in which he gives his pen full play, that, at the 
period before us, his style, though always peculiarly his 
own — " Whedonic," the students were wont to term it 
— was marked for its graceful and beautiful rhetoric. 
This is illustrated in the closing words of the eulogy 
on Dr. Fisk: 

" We stand by the new heaped tombless mound 
where Spring hath spread her fresh green sod, and we 
muse silently over the days when he who was meek as 
a lamb in his mildness and mighty as a lion in his 
strength, with his voice of softness and his look of 
peace, was one among us; and we say as we look upon 
his grave — 

" ' Shrine of the miprhty ! can it be 
That this is all remains of thee? ' 

" From the field where he lies — from the scene where 
he fell — I have come at your kindly bidding; but I 
bring you not that mighty heart which ye knew once 
beat with such heaving throbs in the cause for which 
you are banded; for that heart beats no more; but the 
pulsations it felt and the vibrations which it awakened 
shall revolve to the world's remotest bound, and their 
wave shall never cease. . . . But moldering as is 



f 



Biographical Sketch. 



21 



his dust, I hold on high before you his beaming ex- 
ample, to guide like a naming pillar, your triumphant 
march in the cause for which he lived, and for which 
you labor. These shall be his still surviving life; in 
these, even on earth, shall he be immortal. But to the 
image that once lived and is now dead — to the speech 
once articulate but now hushed — to the eye once beam- 
ing with intelligence but now closed, we join to bid 
our silent — sorrowing — last — farewell! " 

Though " nothing if not a linguist," as he character- 
ized himself when entering upon his tutorship, and now 
in the chair of Latin and Greek, his philosophical cast 
of mind naturally led him to metaphysical studies. 
Indeed, it was hardly possible for him to escape them 
if he would. The needed " relief to his suffocated soul " 
from the influence of Locke and Paley compelled them. 
His mastery in this line was recognized by both his 
associates and the students, and it is quite certain that 
he came to feel for it a decided preference. Says Gil- 
bert Haven, " Popular as he was in his department, 
though severely exacting, no higher pleasure could be 
given a class than, in the temporary arrangements of 
the Faculty, to have him assigned to the care of them 
in philosophy. Here, after all, was his most befitting 
sphere, and in it he shone pre-eminently. He taught 
his students to think and reason, and that with such 
force and felicity that reminiscences of it are common 
among those older classes to this day." " I don't re- 
member how it came about, if I ever knew," says Judge 
Reynolds, "but it so happened that he had our class 
[1841] in mental philosophy, and it was rich." 

How little was it then dreamed that these two lines 
of study were really preparatory to the professor's true 
life-work ! 

The first appearance of Professor Whedon in public 



22 



Biographical Sketch. 



controversy was early in 1835, in connection with the 
abolition controversy. It was in a half-dozen articles 
in Zion's Herald, in reply to a series of twice the 
number by the Rev. Orange Scott,, who held the ex- 
treme views of Mr. Garrison. Mr. George Thompson, 
in the employ of " The British and Foreign Society for 
the Universal Abolition of Slavery and the Slave-trade," 
had then been for some months in this country on his 
mission of lecturing on the subject of slavery. His 
demand was for " immediate, entire, and unconditional 
emancipation, without expatriation, and the admission 
of the colored man into the unabridged privileges of 
the Constitution." Whatever may now be thought of 
the propriety of these propositions, it is plain that the 
meddling of this Englishman on American soil with the 
political questions of this country, upon which prejudice 
and passion were already hot and fierce, was an im- 
pertinence without excuse. Mr. Whedon, in Ziorts 
Herald, made some strictures on his course in a couple 
of articles on "Foreign Interference." Mr. Thompson, 
in reply, denounced him as an unprincipled man. And 
Mr. Garrison spoke of him as " the sanguinary advocate 
of the American Colonization Society," viciously add- 
ing : " We presume he is from the South, and a slave- 
holder, or the son of a slave-holder." 

Meanwhile there had been issued a document, entitled 
An Appeal to the Members of the New England and 
New Hampshire Conferences of the Methodist Episco- 
pal Church, the purpose of which was to awaken atten- 
tion to the short-comings and guilt of the Church in 
relation to slavery. It was met by another document, 
entitled A Counter Appeal to the Ministers and Mem- 
bers of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the New 
England and New Hampshire Conferences. This paper 
was, doubtless, prepared at the desire of Dr. Fisk and 



Biographical Sketch. 



23 



other friends whose names it bears. Though written 
by Professor Whedon, his name does not appear, for 
the evident reason that he was not a member of either 
of the Conferences addressed. The purpose was to 
show that while the system of slavery was sinful, not 
every person holding the relation of master to a slave 
was a sinner. The paper presents the Scripture argu- 
ment, and defends the Church* and Discipline as anti- 
slavery. " With most intense entreaty " it exhorts the 
brethren of the South to lead in the work of emanci- 
pation; and it also urges the brethren of the North to 
cease their bitter and ruinous agitation. The result to 
the author was fierce denunciation as an " apologist for 
slavery." 

The revival of Millenarianismin 1833, popularly known 
as Millerism, predicting the end of the world in 1843, 
produced most disastrous effects in various parts of the 
country, particularly in New England, infecting many 
in the ministry, and winning many adherents in the 
membership of our churches. So threatening was the 
situation that Professor Whedon felt drawn to enter 
into the controversy. He was thus led into a critical 
and historical study of the second advent and its con- 
comitants, and to a series of articles in the Christian 
Advocate and Journal, showing that the Messiah's 
kingdom began with his first advent and ends with his 
second; that the second advent will occur at the end of 
time in connection with the general resurrection and 
final judgment ; that the millennium is not between 
two resurrections ; that the " first resurrection " is a 
resurrection of "souls" and not of bodies; and that 
there is but one resurrection of the bodies of men. He 
was also led to the preparation of a paper on " The 
Millennium of Rev. xx," in which he maintains that the 
first resurrection is not a bodily one, and, if it were, it 



24 



Biographical Sketch. 



could include only the martyrs for Christ and God's 
word. A second article was entitled "Millennial Tra- 
ditions," in which he clearly shows the Persian origin 
and the history of modern premillennialism. These 
papers appeared in The Methodist Quarterly Review 
for 1843. These several discussions, divested of a Utile 
that belonged to that time, abound in the truths and 
principles that are essential in the study of the question 
as it is presented to-day, whether in the theories of 
" Adventism," or in the milder premillennial views held 
by many in different branches of the Church. 

Down to 1840 Professor Whedon was believed to 
be a confirmed bachelor, and, as such, was the subject 
of numberless pleasantries among his friends. Yet he 
was always ready with a retort. One day a student 
in his class, doubtless with an eye to effect, translated 
the word ccelebs, bachelor. A smile went around the 
class, upon which the professor quietly asked, "Do 
you know the derivation of coelebs f " " No, sir," was 
the reply. "Coelu?n, heaven, and eo, to go ! The next." 
The tables were admitted to be turned. On the ]5th 
day of July, 1840, he married Miss Eliza Ann Searles, 
of White Plains, N. Y., formerly of Brooklyn, a lady 
of a beautiful character and estimable worth, who was 
a delightful acquisition to the social life of the little 
world into which she was thus introduced. For forty- 
five years she stood by his side, a faithful companion, 
a devoted wife, and, in the days when infirmities came 
too early upon him, proving, in her love and care, the 
source of unfailing strength, support, and cheer. Be- 
yond all question, to her limitless patience, her untir- 
ing devotion, and her assiduous attendance the Church 
owes years of the continuance of his life and service. 

At the commencement of 1842 Professor Whedon 
placed his resignation in the hands of the trustees of 



Biographical Sketch. 



25 



the University, to take effect at the close of the ensuing 
term, in December. He had become weary of the 
daily routine of the class-room, and turned his thoughts 
longingly and hopefully to the pastorate. The feeling 
among the students was one of deep and universal re- 
gret for the loss of their instructor and friend, and the 
prevalent sentiment was that the college had lost its 
most brilliant professor. In the spring of 1843 he was 
transferred to the Troy Conference, and appointed to 
Pittsfield, Mass. It was evidently a misapprehension of 
the man that led to this appointment, yet he faithfully 
applied himself to the duties that devolved upon him, 
unused though he was to many of his surroundings. A 
most congenial friendship was formed with the Rev. Dr. 
John Todd, then the Congregational pastor of the place, 
and among his own people his excellence was highly 
appreciated. Mr. William Renne, who was one of his 
flock, pronounced him " one of the best men with whom 
he ever became acquainted." He says: "It was my 
privilege to carry him with my own horse and carriage 
to the preaching places out of the village, such as 
Pontoosuc, West Port, Barkerville, etc., and commun- 
ion with him on these occasions, I esteem as being 
among the best and sweetest reminiscences of my 
Christian life. He was a manly Christian man. He 
could administer reproof with such sweetness and yet 
with such dignity as never failed to command respect 
and win the offender. If I mistake not, this was his 
first charge after leaving Wesleyan University, and he 
often remarked that it was difficult for him to get off 
his college coat. 

" His library contained the choicest collection of books 
I have ever seen, and I do not wonder that he loved to 
commune with them, and so nobly took on the fashion 
of a high Christian nobility. He had a remarkable 



26 



Biographical Sketch. 



memory ; but what he remembered was worthy of a 
place in the mind and heart of a Christian minister. 

"After he accepted the call to the Michigan Univer- 
sity, I asked him the reason of his leaving the pastorate 
for what seemed to me a less important position. His 
answer was that, in this new field, he could be in con- 
tact with the minds of young men, upon whom impres- 
sions could be made that would be far more reaching 
for the world's good than would be possible in any pas- 
torate he could hope to enjoy. I often called on him 
at his office in New York, and he always spoke of 
Pittsfield with affection, and with thanksgiving to 
God for giving him there some souls as seals to his 
ministry." 

In 1845 Mr. Whedon was stationed at Rensselaerville, 
N. Y. Scarcely had he become settled to his work when 
he received and accepted an election to the chair of 
Logic, Rhetoric, and Philosophy of History in the Uni- 
versity of Michigan. With the conviction, born of his 
experience, that he mentioned to Mr. Renne as his prime 
motive, there was the consideration of a better support 
than he had thus far received in the pastorate (less than 
four hundred dollars per annum, besides rent), and the 
suggestion that the department of philosophy might 
come into his hands. He was warmly welcomed by the 
Methodists of Michigan. They were justly proud of 
him as their denominational representative in their State 
university. They became his devoted personal friends. 
They sent him as one of their delegates to the General 
Conference of 1852, and stood solid for him in his suc- 
cessive elections as editor. The affection w T as warmly 
returned, and to the close of his life he cherished the 
attachments thus formed. In the university he for seven 
years enjoyed a like popularity with that he had experi- 
enced at Middletown. He twice took his turn with the 



Biographical Sketch, 



27 



other members of the faculty in the office of chancellor. 
He was at home in his professorship, and enjoyed the 
confidence of his associates. Emory and Henry College, 
at Abingdon, in Virginia, at its annual commencement 
in 1847, testified its appreciation of him by conferring 
upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity. 
It was afterward understood that Wesleyan University 
had planned to bestow that degree upon him at its 
commencement, which occurred a little later ; Wes- 
leyan, however, compensated itself in 186 7 by creating 
him Doctor of Laws. 

It was about the middle of his Michigan life, when 
Dr. Whedon had hardly passed the middle of his earthly 
career, that he had the experience of which, nearly a 
quarter of a century later, he thus wrote : 

" When we had accomplished our fortieth year, we 
utterly gave ourself over for an old man. and took to 
reading Cicero's f De Senectute.' The Roman orator 
brought up numerous examples of fine old Roman 
saints, who taught us what beautiful hues may suffuse 
the afternoon sky of life. This made us a better Chris- 
tian, and so a happier man." 

But at length sore troubles arose. Medically, Dr. 
Whedon was a homeopathist, and employed in his 
family physicians of that school, which gave offense to 
the allopathists of the medical college. Deafness was 
slowly growing upon him. And, besides, the political 
sky was dark and portentous. The slavery question, 
the agitation of which he had once vainly labored to 
quiet, had rent the Church in twain by the Southern 
secession, and the slave power was pushing forward to 
the domination of the Xation. As the purpose of the 
slaveholding oligarchy became more and more manifest 
in their efforts for the extension of slavery into free 
territory, Dr. Whedon, with many thousands of oth- 



28 



Biographical Sketch. 



ers who, like him, admitted the constitutional rights 
of slavery in States where it existed, was roused to an 
early resistance. He was in full sympathy with the 
Free-Soil movement of 1848, and when many of its 
leaders returned to their old parties and to submission 
to Southern demands, they went without him as a fol- 
lower. Then came days of humiliation and shame 
when the Fugitive Slave act of 1850 made the whole 
free North a Negro-hunting ground, and every free man 
a slave-catcher. The measure was, in his view, full of 
moral wickedness and political iniquity. It kindled all 
his conscientious wrath against the burning injustice, 
and he dared not be silent. He felt it an insult to, and 
a degradation of, his manhood, and his whole soul rose 
up in indignant revolt. The opinions he had expressed 
fifteen years before he continued to hold, and he still 
believed the counsel then given to have been wise. 
The key to his action in both 1835 and 1850 is found in 
his own words in his Phi Beta Kappa oration at Wes- 
leyan University. "And there stands Slavery," he 
said, "never less ashamed than now — not couchant, 
but rampant — making her plans to live forever — boldly 
claiming to advance, by equal steps, with Freedom — as 
if darkness were as good as light, and the devil had as 
fair a right to a lion's share as Messiah. Nor may you 
marvel, friends, if I, who was once noted here as the 
'apologist of slavery,' can now present myself its stern 
assailant. For its existence I did, and would, apologize ; 
but never for its extension. I would deal gently with the 
hereditary sin of its being ; but I abhor the stupendous 
volitional crime of its propagandism. And, when I 
think what a scheme of continental enormity the slave 
power is seeking to develop before us, my heart sick- 
ens with disgust, and my soul is paralyzed with horror." 
With a singular forecast, with almost prophetic vision, 



Biographical Sketch. 



29 



he predicted the successive steps of the propagandists 
by which, with the aid of the Supreme Court, slavery 
was to be made national — a fate from which the coun- 
try was saved only by their own madness in precipitat- 
ing the War of the Rebellion. 

So bold exercise of the right of freedom of thought 
and speech could not in those days of obsequious party 
flunkyism be allowed to escape unpunished. He had 
not intruded the subject upon his college classes, but he 
was guilty of utterances on the Conference floor, and 
in lyceum lectures, all outside of the university, Avhich 
were offensive to the party in power, and he must be 
put down. The university was under the control of a 
Board of Regents elected by the Legislature, the major- 
ity of whom were men of the Cass, pro-slavery type of 
democracy. A resolution was introduced into a meet- 
ing of the regents dismissing him from his professor- 
ship ; but, on reflection, it was perceived that its pas- 
sage would be suicidal. Then, as an indirect way of 
achieving what they dared not do directly, under pre- 
tense of reorganizing the board of instruction, the entire 
faculty were dismissed and all re-elected with the ex- 
ception of himself. The action was too transparent, 
and the recoil produced by the consequent excitement 
was so severe that he was told that if he would make 
application to the board he would be re-elected ; but he 
would not humble himself to the imperious magnates who 
knew well his qualities and had struck him down. His 
Methodist friends promised to effect his re-election if 
he would accept it, but his soul loathed subjection to a 
set of political party overseers, and he refused. 

In the summer of 1852 Dr. Whedon removed to 
the East, and, after consultation with New York 
friends, several of whom desired its advantages for 
their sons, he opened a classical and commercial school 



30 



Biogkaphical Sketch. 



at Ravens wood, L. I. The labor devolving upon him 
proved too severe for his small amount of physical 
strength, and this, with his increasing deafness, soon 
convinced him of the necessity of closing the school. 
The pastorate of the Twenty-seventh Street Church, 
in New York city, becoming vacant by the acceptance, 
by Dr. Daniel Curry, its pastor, of the presidency of 
Indiana Asbnry University, he was appointed to its pul- 
pit. In 1855 and 1856 he was stationed at Jamaica, N. Y. 

During the few years preceding the period to which 
we have now come, Dr. Whedon found leisure for a 
considerable use of his pen. In 1850 he delivered the 
Phi Beta Kappa oration at Wesleyan University, 
entitling it "The Man Republic." In 1855 he ad- 
dressed the Belles-Lettres and Philological Societies 
of Dickinson College on " Homer." In 1859 he 
preached the annual sermon before the Concord Bib- 
lical Institute, now the Boston School of Theology, tak- 
ing, for his subject, "Substitutional Atonement, Ad- 
missible by Reason, Demonstrable by Scripture." In 
1852 Messrs. John P. Jewett & Co., of Boston, pub- 
lished a collection of nine addresses, entitled Public 
Addresses, Collegiate and Popular. Besides these, we 
find in The Ladies' 1 Repository for 1849 a paper on 
" The Judgment depicted and distinguished from the 
Destruction of Jerusalem, in Our Lord's Discourse, 
Matthew xxiv, with an Exposition," which is the basis 
of the exposition in his commentary; in 1854, "The 
Sacred Test;" in 1856, "Phonography and Phonot- 
ypy," "The Phonetic Dictionary," "The Sacred Num- 
bers " (the substance of which is inserted in the com- 
mentary on Luke vi, 13), "The Resurrection," "The 
Christian Week and Sabbath," and " Odylics and Spir- 
itualisties ; " and, in 1855, "A Chip of Logic" in the 
National Magazine. These articles, without doubt, 



BlOGEAPHICAL SKETCH. 



31 



contributed to make his power as a writer known to 
the Church at large. 

Several things combined to bring Dr. "Whedon 
forward at the General Conference of 1856, as a candi- 
date for the editorship of the " Methodist Quarterly 
Review and Books of the General Catalogue." He had 
become widely known in both the East and the West. 
He had been strongly urged at the General Conference 
of 1852 for some one of the literary posts in the gift of 
the Church. It was, says Bishop Haven, " evident from 
his studious habits, his purely college style, and, above 
all, his increasing deafness, that, in the pastorate, he 
was not in his sphere; he was perceptibly out of 
place. But the Church could not afford to spare 
from its service this man of wide learning and pro- 
found culture while yet in the early years of middle 
life. At this hour his friends and old college students 
conceived the idea of placing him in charge of the 
Quarterly. They could not elect him to the General 
Conference of 1856, but they did elect him in that 
General Conference, against a most able and accom- 
plished incumbent — not as a reflection on the editor that 
then was, for, though he was deservedly popular for his 
rare abilities, even his own friends, in some instances^ 
gave their votes for the new nominee." To this must 
be ndded the influence of his position in relation to the 
antislavery cause. His friends had recognized his un- 
flinching courage, and his readiness to suffer the loss of 
place and emolument rather than surrender his convic- 
tions. The aggressions of slavery had become bolder. 
The Kansas-Xebraska struggle had demonstrated the 
purpose of carrying slavery into all the Territories of 
the Nation. The Supreme Court had pronounced the 
Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, and it needed 
but one or two more decisions of the same court to 



32 



Biographical Sketch. 



establish slavery as legal in the free States of the 
Union. 

While it was thus in the Nation, in the Church the 
controversy was carried on with intense fervor, with 
the purpose of so changing the rules that all real slave- 
holders should be excluded from its pale. It was nat- 
ural, therefore, that the more antislavery portion of 
the General Conference should seek, as they did, to 
place in a position of so great responsibility and influ- 
ence a gentleman whom they believed in hearty sympa- 
thy with their views. 

To this position to which Dr. Whedon was thus called, 
he received sis re-elections, several times unanimously. 
Dr. McClintock, his predecessor for eight years, had, to 
quote Bishop Foster, "lifted the Quarterly Review 
from obscurity to be recognized as one of the most 
learned and respectable theological reviews in the 
United States or in the world. For twenty-eight years 
his successor, Dr. Whedon, occupied the position, giv- 
ing growing honor and respectability to the publication 
every year of his life." Dr. J. M. Buckley, to illustrate 
"the vast work of solid, taxing, intellectual toil" per- 
formed, says, " Sixty volumes of duodecimo matter he 
gave to the Church in the pages of the Quarterly — 
thirty volumes of three hundred pages each, from his 
own pen." Says Bishop Haven, " The productions of 
his own pen have, from the first, possessed the most 
commanding interest. He never speaks to his large 
audience without something to say, and what he says 
is said so clearly that the most casual and unlearned 
reader knows, as well and as delightedly as does the 
thoughtful and scholarly, precisely what he means. No 
living writer is master of so trenchant and incisive a 
style. He penetrates the heart of the matter in hand 
with a word, and swiftly lays open its beauty and truth, 



Biographical Sketch. 



33 



or its deformity and falsity. His book notices fre- 
quently condense a volume into a page, or furnish, 
which pleases him best, a full discussion of the subject 
involved." 

As Dr. Whedon had been one of the early college 
graduates in American Methodism, and most of his life 
had been passed in active association with young men, 
he was naturally interested in the young scholars of the 
Church. He early sought to bring them into the ranks 
of his contributors, and it was to him a matter of great 
satisfaction that many who have since attained high rank 
as writers put forth their maiden efforts under his own 
inspiration. In making up a round of articles for one 
of his earlier numbers, it chanced that papers were 
selected bearing the names of Rev. W. F. Warren, A.M., 
Rev. Gilbert Haven, A.M., and Rev. W. H. Barnes. 
Upon this he remarks that it is a noticeable and, on his 
part, an " unintentional fact, that the first three articles 
of the present number are from new contributors, all 
young writers and scholars from whom the Church has 
much to hope." " He selected articles," says Dr. Potts, 
'•not writers ; and to his wisdom and just discrimina- 
tion many men owe their earlier encouragements in lit- 
erature." The Rev. Dr. Lewis R. Dunn thus testifies 
of his influence upon himself : " He was the man who 
more than any other, or all others, first encouraged me 
to write for the press ; and, if in volume, or review, or 
pamphlet, or paper, I have thus been enabled to serve 
the Church and my fellow-men, Dr. Whedon is to be 
largely credited for such results." It was never to him 
an agreeable thing to reject a contribution from whom- 
soever offered, however ill-adapted it might be to his 
purpose, and, when done, it was often with a suggestion 
that led to a fresh and successful effort. That offense 
should never be taken was, perhaps, not to have been 
3 



34 



Biographical Sketch. 



expected ; yet it is due to truth to say that the subjects 
of his severest critical judgments were those persons 
most closely allied to him in friendship or in blood. 

The Commentary on the JSTew Testament was orig- 
inally intended as a single volume, with brief notes, 
prepared in behalf of the Tract Society of the Church, 
at the suggestion of Dr. Abel Stevens, then its corre- 
sponding secretary. The work was completed as far 
as the Apocalypse, when it was on all hands thought 
best to provide a larger work for popular use, in ac- 
cordance with the action of the General Conference of 
1852. At the earnest solicitation of Bishop Janes and 
other friends, he undertook the broader work, giving 
to it, as he explained, the "spare hours over and above 
the performance of duties sufficient alone for the feeble 
strength of the laborer," adding that u nothing but the 
sense that the responsibility had been assumed, and that 
no nobler labor can be performed than the bringing 
of the word of God in contact with the popular mind, 
could have induced him to prosecute the work." "If 
it meet the wants of the Church," he said, "he will be 
profoundly thankful to Almighty God that the vitality 
expended has been invested in so noble a department." 
The original purpose was a work of three volumes; but, 
as it progressed, it grew to five. The first volume 
was issued in 1860, and the final one in 1880. It was 
his intent to prepare the entire work with his own 
hand, but from waning strength he was led to intrust 
the Epistles to the Philippians and Colossians, and also 
the two Epistles of Peter, with the exception of the con- 
cluding chapter, to his nephew, Dr. D. A. Whedon. The 
Commentary was " intended for popular use," but the 
scholarly student has found it admirably adapted to his 
needs. Without the apparent critical qualities of Ols- 
hausen, Alford, or Meyer, it presents the results of the 



Biographical Sketch. 



35 



most thorough research in terms intelligible to the un- 
learned inquirer. It was in 1875, on the publication of 
the fourth volume, that the author wrote these touching 
words : " ' May you live until you finish your Commen- 
tary ! ' is a kindly wish which we have heard so often 
that we smile as the simultaneous finis of work and life 
which the prayer assigns draws nigh. If there be any 
death whose mode we covet, it is that of Venerable 
Bede." The successive volumes were welcomed with 
the highest critical commendations, in both the United 
States and Great Britain. Bishop Ellicott and Dean 
Robert Payne Smith spoke warmly of their excellence. 
Perhaps, however, nothing from the reviewers afforded 
greater satisfaction to the author than the words of Dr. 
McClintock, written while he was pastor of the Amer- 
ican Chapel in Paris : " I have had Dr. Whedon's Com- 
mentary [the first volume] on hand for a twelvemonth, 
and have tested it in what is, perhaps, the surest trial 
for such a book — by reference to it when engaged in 
preparation for the pulpit. It may appear strange to 
commend a volume so small as this for its value as a 
homiletical book, yet it is in precisely this field that it 
has especial merit." An English edition of the work is 
issued from the press of Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton, 
London ; the Epistle to the Romans has been translated 
into Italian; and the Gospels into Hindustani. 

It would have been singular, indeed, had criticism 
offered no opposing opinions. In this respect Mr. Spur- 
geon stands without a peer. Of the first volume (on 
Matthew and Mark) he had said: "Many a Sunday- 
school teacher will feel himself a rich man when he has 
this volume in his possession." On receiving Acts and 
Romans he decided that " Dr. Whedon lacks common 
sense, and is no expositor. He is furiously anti-Calvin- 
istic, and as weak as he is furious." 



36 



Biographical Sketch. 



About 1868 the Commentary on the Old Testament 
in eight volumes, uniform with those on the New Tes- 
tament, was projected. Under Dr. Whedon's editorial 
supervision, four volumes, prepared by Drs. Daniel 
Steele, M. S. Terry, William Hunter, J. K. Burr, and 
A. B. Hyde, were published before his death. It is but 
just to add, that a considerable portion of the reading 
of two or three of these was intrusted to the fully 
competent hand of the Rev. Dr. J. Longking, with 
instructions to report to his chief any thing doubtful 
or unsatisfactory. And, as is well-known, much other 
work was, under the supervision of the editor, per- 
formed outside of the office. This was in accordance 
with the action of the General Conference. As early 
as 1864, at least, it was quite widely felt that the ed- 
itorship of books should be separated from that of the 
Review, as the labor was more than one man could 
perform. It was, however, deemed the better plan 
that the editorship should remain unchanged, and all 
needed assistance be furnished. It was by such assist- 
ance that so much was accomplished. 

The work on the Will was issued in 1864. Its full 
title is The Freedom of the Will as a Basis of Human 
Responsibility, and a Divine Government Elucidated 
and Maintained in its Issue with the Necessitarian Tfie- 
ories of Hobbes, Edwards, the Princeton Essayists, and 
other Leading Advocates. The successive steps in Dr. 
Whedon's advance in firm grasp of philosophic truth 
are easily traced. " Even so late as the day of my own 
pupilage," he said, in ]850, "the scholar was expected 
to understand his soul from Locke, his conscience from 
Paley, and his responsibility from Edwards. Of this 
triad, if the indicated Materialism of the first, the low 
Expediency of the second, and the granite Fatalism of 
the third did not prepare me for the Atheism of Hume, 



Biographical Sketch. 



37 



it was because my own moral sensibilities disbelieved 
and repudiated the whole quaternion. I could neither 
believe, from the first, that I had no soul; from the 
second, that I hud no conscience; from the third, that 
I had no will; nor from the fourth, that I had no God." 
We have seen his conflict with Locke and Paley, and his 
emancipation ; we have now to note his struggle with 
Edwards. However much he may have previously read 
the Inquiry into the Freedom of the, Will, there came 
a time in the earlier half of his Middletown life when he 
set himself to a thorough examination of that great 
work. As he followed Edwards's steps he felt compelled 
to assent to the argument until he, at length, found 
himself led into the terrible grasp of an iron fatalism. 
From this his whole soul revolted, but his reason saw 
no way of escape. It caused him the greatest distress. 
It haunted him by day, and awoke him from sleep by 
night. He called on God for relief, and besought him 
for light ; he would rise from his bed to pray; and, 
finally, when on his knees in prayer, he saw the clew. 
With that clew he turned anew to his reading the first 
chapters of Edward*, and soon detected his fallacies 
and mistakes. That clew was the fact of human respon- 
sikMity. It is the basis of his argument against the 
necessarian theory. Thus the treatise on the Will was 
begotten in prayer. It was at the suggestion of Dr. 
Fisk that he began to write, but it was twenty-five 
years before the work was given to the public. " My 
son," said he one day to his son John Swinburne, who 
was copying for him, "that chapter was written before 
you wns born." 

A conversation with him soon after its publication 
Dr. J. M. Buckley thus relates: "I said to him, 'Doc- 
tor, permit me to ask two questions?' 

" ' Ask them,' he said. 



38 



Biographical Sketch. 



" ' First, is this an original book, or is it a reply to 
Jonathan Edwards ? ' 

" * I design it not as a formal reply, but as a real 
reply,' he answered. 

" c 1 have gone slowly through it, and I feel that 
there is a residuum of mystery which you have not 
removed,' said I. 

" ' There is a residuum of mystery every-where. 
What I claim to have done is to have driven that 
residuum back until what Edwards and his class predi- 
cated of divine sovereignty in relation to the human 
will is no longer conceivable. That is all,' was his 
answer." 

And that is enough. 

This w T ork on the Will is admitted on all hands to 
contain the strongest presentation of the doctrine of 
freedom against necessity hitherto made. On its ap- 
pearance the reviewers took it up in the Blbliotheca 
Sacra, The New Englander, The American Presby- 
terian Quarterly, The Danville Quarterly, and The 
Princeton and Boston Heviews. It is also made the 
subject of regular lectures in Calvinistic theological 
seminaries. These are high testimonies to its power 
in the great debate. 

At the solicitation of Dr. Park, the editor of the Bib- 
liotheca Sacra, Dr. Whedon, in 1862, furnished for 
that periodical an article on "The Doctrines of Meth- 
odism," and in 1878 he prepared for Johnson's New 
Universal Cyclopaedia, the article on " Armininnism and 
Arminius." He occasionally entered into controversy, 
but it was chiefly in defense of the doctrines and polity 
of Methodism. He, of course, replied to the criticism 
of his work on the Will. He defended Wesleyan Ar- 
minianism against all comers, and they were not few. 
He opposed lay delegation, while it seemed to him to 



BlOGKAPHICAL SKETCH. 



39 



be advocated in the interest of a party; but, as 
adopted, he approved it, except that he would have 
preferred an election by the society rather than by the 
Quarterly Conference. Believing Methodist Episco- 
pacy to be in peril, from threatened innovation, he 
came to its defense, holding that any modification 
of it could be effected only by the concurrent 
action of the General and Annual Conferences. In 
these and other debates he contended for the truth, as 
he regarded it, always distinguishing; between an error 
and its author, though when personally attacked he felt 
himself absolved from observing the distinction. In 
this connection, the following, from an editorial notice 
written upon the announcement of Lis death, is of 
interest, though its source cannot now be identified. 

"In his personal character Dr. Whedon was not 
what to the reader of his writings he often seemed to 
be. We have heard young men, who have known him 
only through his literary productions, say that they con- 
ceived him as imperious in bearing, and as lacking in 
geniality and gentleness of spirit. A merciless logic had 
given them the idea of a severe and merciless spirit. 
Xo conception could be farther from the truth. AVith 
him an error was always separate from its author, and 
to demolish the one by sound argument, emphasized 
and made effective, if need be, by the keenest sarcasm, 
was entirely consistent with high respect for the other. 
To know Dr. Whedon personally was to love him for 
his gentleness and his courtesy as well as for his intel- 
lectual power. His splendid talents were consecrated 
to Christ, and the sanctifying influence of the Spirit 
and the truth was manifest in his daily life." 

Illustrative of the point just now in hand is this 
testimony of Dr. L. I». Dunn, who was for several 
years, in different fields of labor, his pastor: 



40 



Biographical Sketch. 



" Although I was comparatively a young man when 
I first became the pastor of his family, I never had 
a more pleasant and agreeable parishioner than Dr. 
Whedon. He always gave me such a cordial welcome 
to his home, and although I was half afraid of his 
grand, colossal intellect and his vast and varied knowl- 
edge, yet he would draw me out in conversation, and 
with so mucli sympathy for myself and my work, that 
he would make me forget my timidity and talk with 
him as with a father, or, even more familiarly, as with 
a brother. He never seemed to be in a hurry. He 
would lay aside books and papers at any time for a 
chat, and never, by look or gesture, seemed to indicate 
that he wished you to go. I really learned to love 
him. He was, indeed, a most lovable man. To those 
who have known him only by his writings, and who 
remember how he handled the peculiar dogmas of Cal- 
vinism and the errors of other systems, whether of 
religion or philosophy, with the tightening coils of his 
inexorable' logic, this may seem strange, but not so to 
those who knew his heart as well as his intellect. . . . 
He always assisted me in the Lord's Supper, and those 
who have been present on such occasions will never 
forget with what dignity, sweetness, holy fervor, and 
deep devotion he would address his brethren, while 
still kneeling at the altnr, after they had partaken of 
the sacred emblems. . . . Dr. Whedon was a Christian 
gentleman. His manners were polished and refined. 
He was keenly alive to the proprieties of life, both at 
home and in the social circle. He was exceedingly 
fond of his family. What a wealth of love he had 
for them they alone knew. His very life was bound 
up in them. And great was their love for him in re- 
turn." 

When slavery, which in 1845 divided the Church, 



Biographical Sketch. 



41 



Lad perished in the War of the Rebellion, just ended, 
it seemed to Dr. Whedon, as well as to many others, 
that, the cause of the separation having been removed, 
there ought to be no obstacle to a more fraternal feeling 
than had existed between "the two Methoclisms." 
With this spirit he seized the opportunity, the first that 
offered, when the General Conference of the Church, 
South, and the New York East Conference were in 
session at the same time, in 1866, and wrote and pre- 
sented the following resolution: 

" Whereas, The General Conference of the Method- 
ist Episcopal Church, South, is now in session in the 
city of New Orleans; therefore, 

"Resolved, That we, the New York East Annual 
Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, hereby 
present to that venerable representative body our 
Christian salutations, and cordially invite them, together 
with us, to make next Sabbath, April 8, 1866, a day of 
special prayer, both in private and in the public con- 
gregations, for the peace and unity of heart of our 
common country, and for the full restoration of Chris- 
tian sympathy and love between the Churches, and es- 
pecially between the different branches of Methodism 
within this Nation; and upon the reception of an accept- 
able affirmative reply, this concert of prayer will be 
considered by this Conference as adopted." 

Strange as it may now seem, the offering of this res- 
olution led, in some quarters, to the inference that its 
author was abandoning some of his former principles. 
Yet it was truly born of the same intense loyalty which 
led him during the war to say to a minister, who, not to 
displease men of either party, seemed to try to preach 
and pray on both sides: "Doctor, you make me sick 
at my stomach with your prayers ! " The war had 
closed, and there was then but one side. What did the 



42 



Biographical Sketch. 



country need more than " peace and unity of heart," 
and what the Churches more than " the full restoration 
of Christian sympathy and love?" And surely the 
movement for prayer for both was eminently fit and 
becoming. 

Had the spirit which moved to this proposition been 
genera], formal fraternity between the two Churches 
would not have been far distant. When it was brought 
about none rejoiced more than Dr. Whedon. In the 
interval, sharp discussions arose, in which he took firm 
positions on the questions of the relations of the two 
Churches, Southern loyalty, the treatment of the freed- 
men, Negro education, and others connected with them. 
The Quarterly was the first to demand education for 
the freedman. " The time is coming," Dr. Whedon 
wrote, " when we may need not only the Negro labor 
but the Negro vote. The Negro, when educated and 
intelligent, will ever think, speak, act, and vote on the 
side of freedom, civilization, loyalty, and the Protestant 
religion." This was, in his view, " no small consideration 
as against the ignorant, Romanist, foreign element led 
by the demagogue and mobocrat." 

An intense constitutional vitality brought Dr. Whe- 
don safely through many a serious illness. He used to 
say that his physicians had several times pronounced 
sentence of death upon him, but he had outlived them 
all. " I am the coldest man in New York," he remarked 
to a friend; and he repeatedly sought for the winter 
the warmth of Florida, where he carried on his work. 
In November, 1877, certain symptoms appeared which 
led his physician to say, " Yon must stop work. 1 ' 
"How long?" "Forever" — shortly, however, miti- 
gating his verdict by adding, " If you could go into the 
country on a farm for a year, it may be that you might 
afterward do some work." Rest and Florida enabled 



Biographical Sketch. 



48 



him to resume in April his old quantum of work and 
complete the fifth volume of his Commentary. 

Mention has been made of Dr. Whedon's deafness. 
In a letter written in 1879 to a friend, who was afflicted 
like himself, he gave of it the following account : 

"My case is of about thirty years' decisive standing. 
Somewhere about 1850 a physician in Ann Arbor, where 
I then resided, administered to me a few doses of qui- 
nine for ague, saying, 'If you hear any rumbling. in 
your ears, stop taking the medicine ; ' but the rumbling 
continues to the present time. Indeed, it rather seems 
to me, that my deafness is produced by the drowning ■ 
of all other sounds by the perpetual roar and hissing 
within the organ. Yet, although the quinine was the 
immediate occasion of the rumble, my previous hearing, 
although fair, was less acute than my wife's. . . . The 
deafness has gradually increased. I can hear no public 
speaker ; have not heard a fragment of a sermon for 
years. The last sound of public worship that I lost 
was the music of the choir. Of this I can now hear 
only the loudest notes, which sound like ragged screech- 
es, dismal to hear." 

To the same friend he wrote, under date of October 
12, 1883, " My deafness has undoubtedly made my whole 
apparent character, and in some degree, my real charac- 
ter, more subjective than it otherwise would have been. 
A deaf man has suffered so many mortifications and ex- 
posures to ridicule by his infirmity, that he shrinks, dis- 
heartened, into retirement, and lives a sort of inner life. 
This to me had its advantages as well as its disadvan- 
tages. It has concentrated me and made me a man of 
one work, and so of more efficient work within my com- 
pass." Some days later he wrote : " As to religious en- 
joyment, I think there is the same difference as in social 
feelings, a lack of emotiveness from the outward im- 



44 



Biographical Sketch. 



pulses, and a quiet subjectivity. I have no raptures, but 
live in a firm assurance that all is well." 

At the General Conference of 1884 Dr. Whedon had 
served the Church seven terms as editor. After the 
election of his successor, the Rev. Daniel Curry, D.D., 
LL.D., the General Conference, on the 20th of May, 
adopted, by a rising vote, the following resolution, ex- 
pressive of its sense of his services : 

*' Resolved, That this General Conference takes pleas- 
ure in expressing to Rev. D. D. Whedon, D.D., their high 
appreciation of the great ability and success with which 
* he has filled the responsible position of Editor of the 
Methodist Quarterly Review and Editor of the Books 
of the General Catalogue, during the last twenty- 
eight years, making the Review second to no similar 
religious publication in this country. The service he 
has rendered the Church by the devotion of his ripe 
scholarship, his extraordinary mental acumen, and his 
trenchant thoughts to the work of enriching our liter- 
ature and supplying intellectual food for both minis- 
try and laity, is worthy of grateful mention and per- 
manent record. During this period of nearly thirty 
years the Quarterly has fully earned and maintained 
its right to stand at the head of our Church publica- 
tions." 

A more private and personal expression of the value 
of Dr. Whedon's work is given in a note to his nephew 
by the Rev. Dr. E. E. Wiley, of the Methodist Episco- 
pal Church, South : "I cannot let this opportunity pass 
without expressing my high admiration of your uncle's 
abilities as an Editor of the Methodist Quarterly Re- 
view for so many years, as a commentator, an author, 
a metaphysician, and a defender of Arminian Method- 
ism. I do not believe that any one man, since the death 
of John Fletcher, has done so much as has Daniel D. 



Biographical Sketch. 



45 



Whedon, by the masterly productions of his pen, to 
drive Calvinism from the pulpit and from the press, 
and to bring into prominence in its place the doctrines 
of a free, full, and complete salvation." 

On the 24th of May Dr. Whedon was stricken with 
paralysis at the residence of his son Charles, in New 
York, and on the 25th he was pronounced in a hope- 
less condition. Yet such was his vitality that he was, 
on the 30th, sufficiently rallied to be removed to Sag 
Harbor, L. I., the home of his eldest son, the Rev. John 
Swinburne Whedon. In the course of the summer he 
was attacked with illness, and was at one time thought 
to be dying. He thought so himself. Yet again he 
rallied, and so far recovered that he turned anew to 
literary work. It was suggested to him that he em- 
ploy his new strength in gathering and putting in sys- 
tematic form a volume made up from materials pre- 
viously published. He undertook it, but finally said 
to his son, " I cannot do it. You and your cousin must 
do it." He then turned to other themes. His suffer- 
ings suggested the title, " The' Great Physician's Ano- 
dyne," of the article which, in December, he forwarded 
to Dr. Curry for the Review. It was his final utter- 
ance to the constituency which he had so long ad- 
dressed. His thoughts dwelt on the great themes of 
God, death, and immortality. Using Professor Adler's 
expression, "It is not probable that man has a spec- 
ter (called a soul) in his brain," he prepared for The 
Independent an article, entitled "The Specter in the 
Brain ; " and, soon afterward, a second, entitled " The 
Vanishing Specter." 

The latter was pronounced in the office the most 
brilliant thing he had ever written. It was a fitting 
-finis to the work of his pen. It appeared in the issue 
following his death. 



46 



Biographical Sketch. 



On his son's appointment to the pastorate of the 
Thirty-seventh Street Church, Dr. Whedon removed 
with him to New York, and, after a few weeks, went 
to Atlantic City, the summer home of his son Charles. 
He was very feeble and in constant bodily suffering. 
The power of rallying was exhausted. On the morn- 
ing of Monday, June 8, 1885, about five o'clock, after 
taking a little water, he said to his son, who was stand- 
ing by his side, "I breathe only in gasps. Do you un- 
derstand ? I breathe only in gasps." Receiving assent, 
he turned and fell asleep. Thus, quietly, sweetly, in 
half an hour he passed away. 

Thus was realized the outlook of the "Annalist's Let- 
ter," written five years before : 

"Let my closing record be, that the guide to and 
through years of serenity, the remedy against pessi- 
mism of belief or feeling, is a firm, deep, Christian 
faith. This, if my experience and trust are a test, 
renders life a eudaimonia, its close a euthanasia, its 
beyond an athanasia." 

Of five children given to Dr. Whedon, one died in 
infancy, and one passed away within a year before him. 
Three remain : John Swinburne, of the New York East 
Conference; Charles Austin, a merchant in New York; 
and Asbury Searles, an orange-grower in Florida; and, 
with them, the devoted wife and loving mother. 

The funeral services were held in St. Paul's Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church, in New York, on the 11th of 
June, under the direction of Bishop Harris. Appro- 
priate addresses were delivered by the Rev. Dr. J. M. 
Buckley and Bishop R. S. Foster, one of his life-long 
friends. An extract from that of the latter will con- 
clude this sketch : 

" I wish to speak particularly of what I conceive to 
be the greatness — the word we are compelled to use, 



Biographical Sketch. 



47 



which he himself would be the first to object to, but no 
other word is suitable to be pronounced when we speak 
of Dr. Whedon, who has now passed from us — he was 
really a very great man among us, and will be remem- 
bered by the Church as such in all coming time. His 
greatness, we go on to say, overcame his physical in- 
firmity, which shut him away from free communion 
with his fellow-men. He could not conveniently and 
pleasantly communicate with them, could not hear their 
utterances, and, therefore, was put in embarrassment 
and constraint, as they were in attempting to put them- 
selves into communion with him. 

"I think that which made him solitary more than his 
infirmity, was the kind of man he was, the kind of world 
he lived in. He traveled a path where there are not 
many tourists; he breathed an air which but few peo- 
ple have the lungs to breathe. He dwelt in a realm of 
thought which found but few sympathizers, marching 
among the stars. The companionship of his life was 
largely his own thought. He was a solitary man be- 
cause he was above following the march of ordinary 
things. 

" That by which Dr. Whedon is best known to-day 
by those who know him at all — and he is known only 
to the brain, and loved by the heart of the brain that 
knows him, known only to the brain of his time, not 
to the eye — not to the common vulgar sense, but to 
the thought of the time; that which makes him most 
known and best known, was his position, his command- 
ing position, as a thinker in the Church — not as a 
speaker — but as the theologian of the Church, filling a 
position which made it his duty to exercise a kind of 
guardianship over the theology of the great Church 
of which he was an ornament. He will be known in 
all coming time as the theologian of his Church, loyal 



48 



Biographical Sketch. 



to the heart's core to all the doctrines which he has 
expounded and vowed to support when he entered its 
ministry and accepted its ordination. As a guardian 
of the Church, loyal to its polity and economy against 
all assailants for the long years of his public career, 
and the devoted, loyal, loving, vigilant, honorable de- 
fender of the Church which gave him position, and 
which for twenty-eight years, in seven successive Gen- 
eral Conferences, with all the lines and currents of in- 
fluence which surround that body and make competition 
so rife and, many times, so dishonorable; without a mem- 
bership in it at the session in which he was first elect- 
ed or afterward, six times by its votes returned him to 
his position. This is the glory and honor of the distin- 
guished man who has been taken from our midst, and 
whose name will forever be worn as a badge of honor 
by the Church which claimed him. 

"He has gone from us, recognized as our brain. Yes, 
we have to concede it. I know well that I speak in the 
presence of great men here to-day, for our Church has 
not been without respectable brnin, without great and 
honorable intellect. But there is no man here, and no 
man in all the length and breadth of Methodism that 
would not willingly and reverently remove the hat at 
the mention of the name of Dr. Whedon, as his supe- 
rior, and not simply his equal. He stands first, and 
recognized as such; and if I may be permitted to say 
it, and I will venture to say it, that in the history of 
American thought, and in the department where Amer- 
ican thought stands conspicuous to-day as among the 
molding and fashioning thought of the last hundred 
years, Daniel D. Whedon stands as one among five con- 
spicuous names that have done most to illustrate their 
power of metaphysical thought, or logical thought, or 
theological thought, their knowledge of ethical law and 



Biographical Sketch. 



49 



of the Divine Mind, their knowledge in the whole realm 
of theology. He stands as equal to any mind, in the 
philosophy and logic of theology, that our country has 
produced. Men have not recognized and known the 
man who has gone from us. Gone from us — it may be, 
it may be not. It may be he is lingering here; it is 
hardly probable. His high ambition must have car- 
ried him into far-away realms and into different as- 
sociations at this hour. He is not here, possibly not 
taking note of this occasion. The mind has gone from 
us. Whedon has gone from us! He is not here; he will 
not be again. There is the perishable casket in which 
he lived for a time. There was his terrestrial home, 
fragile, feeble, its vigor destroyed long ago. There was 
his terrestrial home. We have come here to do rever- 
ence even to it before we put it away into the darkness 
and silence. But he has passed on to join that illus- 
trious company of seers and prophets who studied and 
loved the mind of God. 

"And to-day, no doubt, somewhere he has formed 
the acquaintance of the worthies that have adorned the 
Church along its ages, and among them all there can 
be no worthier son of the great Father of us all. He 
will stand their peer and equal. 

" Glory be to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
Ghost, that he has made it possible for men upon the 
earth to grow to such a stature as crowns the life of our 
departed brother." 
4 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



ARMINIANISM AND ARMINIUS.* 

Arminianism, as the customary antithesis to Calvin- 
ism, is, within the limits of the evangelical doctrines, 
the theology that tends to freedom in opposition to the 
theology of necessity, or absolutism. This contrast rises 
into thought among all nations that attain to reflection 
and philosophy. So in Greek and Roman thinking, 
Stoicism and all materialistic atheism held that mind, 
will, is subject to just as fixed laws in its volitions as 
physical events are in their successions. When, how- 
ever, men like Plato and Cicero rose to a more tran- 
scendent sense of moral responsibility, especially of 
eternal responsibility, they came to say, like Cicero, 
"Those who maintain an eternal series of causes despoil 
the mind of man of free will, and bind it in the neces- 
sity of fate." 

Theistic fatalism, or Predestination, consists in the 
predetermination of the Divine Will, which, determin- 
ing alike the volitions of the will and the succession of 
physical events, reduces both to a like unfreedom; but 
those who hold Predestination very uniformly hold also 
to volitional necessity,* or the subjection of will in its 
action to the control of strongest motive-force. And as 

* This essay is here inserted from Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia, 
by courtesy of the publishers of that work. The note on page 60 is 
Dr. Whedon's in the Methodist Quarterly Review. 



Arminianism and Akminius. 51 



the Divine Will is held subject to the same law, so Neces- 
sity, as master of God, man, and the universe, becomes 
a universal and absolute Fate. This doctrine, installed 
by Saint Augustine, and still more absolutely by John 
Calvin, in Christian theology, is from them called Au- 
gustinianism, or, more usually, Calvinism. 

In opposition to this theology, Arminianism maintains 
that, in order to true responsibility, guilt, penalty, espe- 
cially eternal penalty, there must be in the agent a free- 
will y and in a true, responsible free-will the freedom 
must consist in the power, even in the same circum- 
stances and under the same motives, of choosing either 
way. No man can justly be eternally damned, accord- 
ing to Arminianism, for a choice or action which he 
cannot help. If fixed by Divine decree or volitional 
necessity to the particular act, he cannot be held re- 
sponsible or justly punished. In all such statements, 
however, it is presupposed, in order to a just responsi- 
bility, that the agent has not responsibly abdicated or 
destroyed his own power. No agent can plead in bar 
of responsibility any incapacity which he has freely 
and willfully brought upon himself. It is also to be 
admitted that there may be suffering which is not pen- 
alty — finite sufferings, for which there are compensa- 
tions, and for which every one would take his chance 
for the sake of life. But eternal suffering, for which 
there is no compensation, inflicted as a judicial penalty 
on the basis of justice, can be justly inflicted only for 
avoidable sin. If Divine decree or volitional necessity 
determine the act, it is irresponsible, and judicial pen- 
alty is unjust. 

Arminianism also holds that none but the person who 
freely commits the sin can be guilty of that sin. One 
person cannot be guilty of another person's sin. A 
tempter may be guilty of tempting another to sin, but 



52 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



then one is guilty of the sin, and the other of solely the 
sin of temptation. There can thus be no vicarious guilt: 
and as punishment, taken strictly, can be only inflic- 
tion for guilt upon the guilty, there can literally and 
strictly be no vicarious punishment. If innocent Da- 
mon die for Pythias guilty of murder, Damon is not 
guilty because he takes Pythias's place in dying, and 
his death is not to him a punishment, but a suffering, 
which is a substitute for another man's punishment. 
The doer of sin is solely the sinner, the guilty, or the 
punished. These preliminary statements will elucidate 
the issues between Calvinism and Arminianism on the 
following points: 

1. Fore- ordination. — Calvinism affirms that God does, 
unchangeably and eternally, fore-ordain whatsoever 
comes to pass. That is, God, from all eternity, pre- 
determines not only all physical events, but all the 
volitions of responsible agents. To this Arminianism 
objects, that the predetermination of the agent's voli- 
tions 'destroys the freedom of his will; that it makes 
God the responsible predeterminer and wilier of sin ; 
and that it makes every sinner to say that his sin ac- 
cords with the Divine Will, and, therefore, so far as 
himself is concerned, is right. It makes God first decree 
the sin, and then punish the sinner for the sin decreed. 
The Arminian theory is this : God does, from all eter 
nity, predetermine the laws of nature and the succession 
of physical and necessary events ; but, as to free moral 
agents, God, knowing all possible futurities, does choose 
that plan of his own conduct which, in view of what 
each agent will ultimately in freedom do, will bring out 
the best results. His system is a system of his own 
actions. And God's predeterminations of his own acts 
are so far contingent as they are based on his prerecog- 
nition of what the agent will freely do ; yet as his 



Aeminianism and Aiiminius. 



53 



omniscience knows the future with perfect accuracy, so 
he will never be deceived nor frustrated in his plans 
and providences. 

Some Arminians deny God's foreknowledge, on the 
ground of the intrinsic impossibility of a future con- 
tingency being foreknown. As the performance of a 
contradictory act is impossible, intrinsically, even to 
Omnipotence, so, say they, the knowability of a future 
contingency, being an essential contradiction, is impos- 
sible even to Omniscience. A contradiction is a noth- 
ing; and it is very unnecessary to say, in behalf of God's 
omnipotence, that he can do all things and all nothings, 
too. So it is equally absurd to say in behalf of his 
omniscience that he knows all things and all nothings, 
too. The exclusion of contradictions does not limit 
God's omnipotence or omniscience, but defines it. Ar- 
minians do not condemn this reasoning, but generally 
hold that their theory is maintainable against Calvin- 
ism on the assumption of foreknowledge. They deny, 
as against the Calvinist, that foreknowledge has any 
influence upon the future of the act, as predetermina- 
tion has. Predetermination fixes the act — foreknowl- 
edge is fixed by the net. In fore-ordination God deter- 
mines the act as he pleases; in foreknowledge the agent 
fixes the prescience as he pleases. In the former case 
God is alone responsible for the creature's act; in the 
latter case God holds the creature responsible, and a 
just divine government becomes possible. Yet most 
Arminians, probably, would say, with the eminent phi- 
losopher, Dr. Henry More, If the divine foreknowledge 
of the volitions of a free agent contradicts the freedom, 
then the freedom, and not the foreknowledge, is to be 
believed. 

2. Divine Sovereignty. — Calvinism affirms that if man 
is free God is not a sovereign. Just so far as man is 



54 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



free to will either way, God's power is limited. Armin- 
ians reply, That if man is not free, God is not a Sover- 
eign, but sinks to a mere mechanist. If man's will is 
as fixed as the physical machinery of the universe, then 
all is machinery and not a government, and God is a 
machinist and not a ruler. The higher man's freedom 
of will is exalted above mechanism, so much higher is 
God elevated as a sovereign. Here, according to Ar- 
minians, Calvinism degrades and destroys God's sover- 
eignty, and Arminianism exalts it; that the freedom 
of man no more limits God's power than do the laws of 
nature by him established; that in both cases, equally, 
there is simply a self-limitation by God of the exercise 
of his power; that Arminianism holds to the absolute- 
ness of God's omnipotence just as truly as Calvinism, 
and to the grandeur of his sovereignty even more ex- 
altedly. 

3. Imputation of Adam's Sin. — Calvinism affirms 
that Adam's posterity is truly guilty of Adam's sin, so 
as to be eternally and justly punishable therefor with- 
out a remedy. As guilty of this sin, God might have 
the whole race born into existence under a curse, with- 
out the power or means of deliverance, and consigned 
to eternal punishment. Upon this Arminians look as a 
dogma violative of the fundamental principles of eter- 
nal justice. They deny that guilt and literal punish- 
ment can, in the nature of things, be thus transferred. 
The theory is, that upon Adam's sin a Saviour was 
forthwith interposed for the race as a previous condition 
to the allowance of the propagation of the race by 
Adam, and a provision for inherited disadvantages. Had 
not a Redeemer been provided, mankind, after Adam, 
would not have been born. The race inherits the nature 
of fallen Adam, not by being held guilty of his sin, but 
by the law of natural descent, just as all posterity in- 



Aemtxiaxism a>td Aemlntcs. 



55 



herit the species-qualities, physical, mental, and moral, 
of the progenitor. Before his fall the presence of the 
Holy Spirit with Adam in fullness supernaturally empow- 
ered him to perfect holiness — the tree of life imparted 
to him a supernatural immortality. Separated from 
both these, he sank into a mere nature, subject to appe- 
tite and Satan. The race in Adam, without redemp- 
tion, is totally incapable of salvation; yet under Christ 
it is placed upon a new redemptive probation, is em- 
powered by the quickening Spirit given to all, and 
through Christ may, by the exercise of free agency, 
attain eternal life. 

4. Reprobation. — Of the whole mass of mankind thus 
involved in guilt and punishment for sin they never 
actually committed, Calvinism affirms that God has left 
a large share '"passed by" — that is, without adequate 
means of recovery, and with no intention to recover 
them — and this from the "good pleasure of his will," 
and for a display of his " glorious justice." The 
other portion of mankind God does, from '"''mere good 
pleasure," without any superior preferability in them, 
"elect," or choose, and confers upon them regeneration 
and eternal life, "all to the praise of his glorious grace." 
The Arminians pronounce such a proceeding arbitrary, 
and fail to see in it either "justice" or "glorious grace." 
The reprobation seems to them to be injustice, and the 
" grace," with such an accompaniment, unworthy the 
acceptance of honorable free agents. Election and rep- 
robation, as Arminianism holds them, are conditioned 
upon the conduct and voluntary character of the sub- 
jects. All submitting to God and righteousness, by 
repentance of sin and true self-consecrating faith, do 
meet the conditions of that election ; all who persist 
in sin present the qualities upon which reprobation de- 
pends. And as this preference for the obedient and 



56 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



holy, and rejection of the disobedient and unholy, lie 
in the very nature of God, so this election and repro- 
bation are from before the foundations of the world. 

5. Philosophical or Volitional Necessity. — Calvinism 
maintains the doctrine that all volitions are determined 
and fixed by the force of strongest motive, just as the 
strokes, of a clock-hammer are fixed and determined by 
the strongest force. The will can no more choose 
otherwise in a given case than the clock-hammer can 
strike otherwise. There is no " power of contrary 
choice" Calvinism often speaks, indeed, of "free 
agents," " free will," " self-determining power," and 
"will's choosing by its own power;" but bring it to 
analysis, and it will always, say the Arininians, be 
found that the freedom is the same as that of the clock- 
hammer — the freedom to strike as it does, and no oth- 
erwise. Arminianism affirms, that if the agent has no 
power to will otherwise than motive-force determines, 
any more than a clock-hammer can strike otherwise, 
then there is no justice in requiring a different volition 
any more than a different clock-stroke. It would be 
requiring an impossibility. And to punish an agent 
for not performing an impossibility is injustice, and to 
punish him eternally, an infinite injustice. Arminian- 
ism charges, therefore, that Calvinism destroys all just 
punishment, and so all free volition and all divine gov- 
ernment. 

6. Infant Damnation. — Holding that the race is truly 
guilty, and judicially condemnable to endless torment 
for Adam's sin, Calvinism necessarily maintains, ac- 
cording to Arminians, that it is just for God to con- 
demn all infants to eternal punishment, even those who 
have never performed any moral act of their own. This 
was held by Augustine, and wherever Calvinism has 
spread this has been a part of the doctrine, more or less 



Arminianism and Armusius. 57 



explicitly taught. Earlier Calvinists maintained against 
the Arminians that there is actual reprobation — that is, 
a real sending to hell — as well as particular election of 
infants. Arminianism, denying that the race is judi- 
cially guilty, or justly damnable for Adam's sin, affirms 
the salvation of all infants. The individual man as 
born does, indeed, irresponsibly possess within his con- 
stitution that nature which will, amid the temptations 
of life, commence to sin when it obtains its full-grown 
strength. He is not, like the unborn Christ, "that holy 
thing." There is, therefore, a repugnance which God 
and all holy beings have toward him by contrariety of 
nature, and an irresponsible unfitness for heaven and 
holy association. If born immortal, with such a nature 
unchangeable, he must be forever unholy, and forever 
naturally unhappy under the divine repugnance. Under 
such conditions Divine Justice would not permit the 
race, after the fall, to be born. But at once the future 
Incarnate Redeemer interposes, restores the divine com- 
placency, and places the race upon a new probation. 
Man is thereby born in a "state of initial salvation," as 
Fletcher of Madeley called it, and the means of final 
salvation are amply placed within the reach of his free 
choice. 

7. Pagan Damnation. — On its own principle, that 
power to perform is not necessary in order to obliga- 
tion to perform, Calvinism easily maintains that pagans, 
who never heard of Christ, are rightly damned for 
want of faith in Christ. They may be damned for 
original sin, and for their own sin, and for unbelief in 
Christ, without any Saviour. Arminianism, on the 
contrary, maintains that there, doubtless, are many in 
pagan lands saved even by the unknown Redeemer. 
They, not having the law, are a law unto themselves. 
Nay, they may have the spirit of faith, so that were 



58 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



Christ truly presented he would be truly accepted. 
They may have faith in that of which Christ is the 
embodiment, like the ancient worthies enumerated in 
Heb. xi. There may not be as great differences in the 
chances for salvation in different lands as Calvinism as- 
sumes. Where little is given, much is not required. 
Arminianism holds that no one of the human race is 
damned who has not had full chance for salvation. 
Missions are none the less important in order to hasten 
the day when all shall be converted. If that millennial 
age shall come, and be of long duration, Arminianism 
hopes that the great majority of the entire race of all 
ages may be finally saved. 

8. Doctri7ies of Grace. — Calvinism maintains that the 
death of Christ is an expiation for man's sin : first, for 
the guilt of men for Adam's sin, so that it is possible 
for God to forgive and save; and, second, for actual sin 
— that thereby the influence of the Spirit restores the 
lapsed moral powers, regenerates and saves the man. 
But these saving benefits are reserved for the elect only. 
Arminianism, claiming a far richer doctrine of grace, 
extends it to the very foundations of the existence of 
Adam's posterity. Grace underlies our very nature and 
life. We are born, and live, because Christ became in- 
carnate and died for us. All the institutes of salvation 
— the-chance of probation, the Spirit, the Word, the 
pardon, the regeneration, the resurrection, and the life 
eternal — are through him. And Arminianism, against 
Calvinism, proclaims that these are for all. Christ 
died for all alike; for no one man more than for any 
other man, and sufficient grace and opportunity for 
salvation is given to every man. 

Calvinism maintains the irresistibility of grace ; or, 
more strongly still, that grace is absolute, like the act 
of creation, which is called irresistible with a sort of 



Aeminianism and Arminius. 



59 



impropriety, from the fact that resistance in that con- 
nection is truly unthinkable. Against this Arminians 
reply that will, aided by prevenient grace, is free even 
in accepting pardoning grace; that though this accept- 
ance is no more meritorious than a beggar's acceptance 
of an offered fortune, yet it is accepted freely and with 
full power of rejection, and is none the less grace for 
that. 

9. Justifying and Saving Faith. — Faith, according 
to Calvinism, is an acceptance of Christ wrought abso- 
lutely, as an act of creation in the man, whereby it is 
as impossible for him not savingly to believe as it is for 
a world to be not created or an infant to be not born. 
And as this faith is resistlessly fastened in the man, so 
it is resistlessly kept there, and the man necessarily 
perseveres to the end. Faith, according to Arminian- 
ism, is, as a power, indeed the gift of God, but as an 
act, it is the free, avoidable, yet really performed act of 
the intellect, heart, and will, by which the man surren- 
ders himself to Christ nnd all holiness for time and 
eternity. In consequence of this act, and not for its 
meritorious value or its any way compensating for or 
earning salvation, it is accepted for righteousness, and 
the man himself is accepted, pardoned, and saved. And 
as this faith is free and rejectable in its beginning, so 
through life it continues. The Christian is as obliged, 
through the grace of God assisting, to freely retain it 
as first freely to exercise it. It is of the very essence of 
his probationary freedom that he is as able to renounce 
his faith and apostatize as to reject it at first. 

10. Extent of the Atonement and Offers of Salvation. 
— Earlier Calvinism maintained that Christ died for the 
elect alone ; later Calvinism affirms that he died for 
one and all, and so offers salvation to all on condition 
of faith. But Arminianism asks, With what consistency 



60 



Essays, Reviews, and Discoueses. 



can the atonement be said to be for all when, by the 
eternal decree of God, it is fore-ordained that a large 
part of mankind shall be excluded from its benefits? 
How, also, can it be for all when none can accept it but 
by efficacious grace, and that grace is arbitrarily with- 
held from a large part? How can it be for all when 
God has so fastened the will of a large part of mankind, 
by counter motive-force, that they are unable to accept 
it ? The same arguments show the inrpossibility of a 
rightful offer of salvation to all, either by God or by 
the Calvinistic pulpit. How can salvation be rationally 
offered to those whom God, by an eternal decree, has 
excluded from salvation ? What right to exhort the 
very men to repent whom God determines, by volitional 
necessity, not to repent ? What right to exhort men to 
do otherwise than God has willed, decreed, and fore- 
ordained they shall do ? If God has decreed a thing, 
is not that thing right? What an awful sinner is the 
preacher who stands up to oppose and defeat God's de- 
crees ! If a man is to be damned for fulfilling God's 
decrees, ought not that imaginary God to be, a fortiori , 
damned for making such decree? If a man does as God 
decrees, ought he not to be by God approved and saved ? 
And since all men do as God decrees, wills, and deter- 
mines they shall do, ought not all men to be saved, so 
that the true theory shall be Universalism ? How can 
grace be offered to the man whom God has decreed 
never to have grace ? or faith be preached to those to 
whom God has made faith impossible? or conditions 
proposed to those from whom God withholds the power 
of performing conditions? Hence, the Arminian affirms, 
that in all public offers of a free or conditional salvation 
to all, the Calvinistic pulpit contradicts its own creed.* 

* The following paragraph, which was interpolated into the text 
by some hand to us unknown, we insert as a foot-note. It hardly 



Arminiaxism and Arminius. 



61 



11. Analogy of Temporal Superiorities. — Calvinism 
argues that in this world God distributes advantages, 
such as wealth, rank, beauty, vigor, and intellect, not 
according to desert, but purely as a sovereign. Hence, 

need be said that we do not concur with, its views, invalidating as it 
does the great share of the foregoing argument: 

Such is an outline of the usual argument on the subject; and it is 
not difficult to determine on which side the logic predominates. If 
we consider the question from its more abstract, more metaphysical 
premises, the Arminian theory has equally the advantage. Most of 
the difficulties of this and all similar inquiries, doubtless, arise from 
the limitations of our faculties, or. rather, of our language. "We un- 
warrantably attribute to the Infinite Mind the modes of thought 
which are peculiar to our finite intellects. The most subtle perplexity 
of this controversy grows out of the idea of time — its past, present, 
and future — and the attempt to reconcile foreknowledge with contin- 
gency or free will. But what is time? It is no entity, no substance, 
like iron, air, oxygen. It is, as Kant teaches, subjective, not objective. 
It is but a habit of the mind, an association of thought, suggested, as 
Locke says, by the succession of ideas, and arising from the finite 
limitations of our faculties. We cannot, therefore, logically transfer 
to the Infinite Mind the temporal distinctions of past, present, and 
future. A succession of ideas, by which alone the conception of time 
is possible, necessarily implies a limitation which cannot be predicated 
of the Absolute Mind. Nor is it necessary for us to assume that all 
duration is an eternal now with God; for here, again, we use a distinc- 
tion of time. We can rightly assume but three facts: first, that, 
owing to limitations of our faculties, and especially of language, we 
have habitudes of thought which do not belong to the Infinite Mind, 
and from which arise our baffling difficulties in the investigation of 
themes like the present. Secondly, that, however incomprehensible 
to us, may be the nature and action of the Divine Mind, yet the ob- 
vious facts of the conscious freedom of man's will and his moral re- 
sponsibility — facts which are the indisputable basis of laws and rights, 
of reward and penalty, of virtue and society — must remain incon- 
testable, and be, in some w r ay, perfect!}- reconcilable with the divine 
government. They are facts within the comprehension of our finite 
faculties, they are positive and certain, and, therefore, the mysterious, 
the unknown cannot be incompatible with them. "With better facul- 
ties, and especially with a better terminology, the chief difficulties of 



62 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



in the same way he may bestow on one faith and eter- 
nal life, and on others unbelief and eternal death. Ar- 
minianism replies, that this very analogy between the 
temporal and the eternal bestowment proves the precise 
reverse. In this probationary world advantages are 
■professedly distributed without regard to judicial recti- 
tude. Men are not rewarded according to their works 
or voluntary character. The wicked are set on liigh, 
and Satan is this world's god. And the very difference 
between the dispensation of the world and that of the 
kingdom of God is, that in the latter blessedness is 
placed at every man's choice, and the result is, judicially, 
according to voluntary faith and works. The Bible no- 
where places beauty or intellect at our own choice, but 
it does declare faith, repentance, and eternal life to be 
in our own power, and holds us responsible for not ex- 
erting the power. 

Basis of Morality. — Calvinism claims that the very 
severity of its system, its deep view of human guilt and 
necessary damnability by birth and nature, its entire 
subjection to divine absolutism, irrespective of human 
ideas of justice, tends to produce a profound piety. 
Arminianism replies, that this is missing the true ideal 
of piety. It seems to be basing Christian morality on 
fundamental immorality. For God to will and prede- 
termine the sin, and then damn the sinner — for him to 
impute guilt to the innocent, and so eternally damn the 
innocent as gnilty — are procedures that appear funda- 
mentally unrighteous, so far as the deepest intuitions 

this controversy may vanish, and it may be seen that we have been 
contending only about words, and confounded in a mere logomachy. 
Hence, as Buckle {History of Civilization, i, 1) says: "Among more 
advanced thinkers there is a growing opinion that both doctrines 
(predestination and free-will) are wrong, or, at all events, that we 
have no sufficient evidence of their truth. 



Arminianism and Arminius. 



63 



of our nature can decide. Thus, first to make God in 
the facts intrinsically and absolutely bad, and then 
require us to ascribe holiness and goodness to his char- 
acter and conduct, perverts the moral sense. It is to 
make him what we are in duty bound to hate, and then 
require us to love and adore him. Sucb adoration, 
secured by the abdication not only of the reason, but 
of the moral sense, and the prostration of the soul to 
pure, naked absolutism, naturally results in the somber 
piety of fear; just as children are frightened into a fac- 
titious goodness by images of terror. While the pity 
of Jesus is serene, firm, winning, and gently vet power- 
fully subduing, the piety of absolutism tends to be 
stern and Judaiclike. While thus apparently defective 
at the roots, it does, nevertheless, often present an ob- 
jective character of rectitude, a practical hardihood and 
aggressive energy in the cause of morality and regu- 
lated freedom. Arminianism, in order to a true and 
rational piety, sees the ideal of rectitude in the divine 
character and conduct, not by mere ascriptions contra- 
dicted hj facts, but in both the facts and the ascriptions. 
A harmony of facts and intuitive reason is produced, 
love to the Divine Being becomes a rational sentiment, 
and a piety cheerful, hopeful, merciful, and gladly obe- 
dient, becomes realized. 

Civil and Religious Liberty. — As the freedom of the 
individual, and his own intransferable responsibility for 
his own voluntary character and conduct, are funda- 
mental principles with Arminianism, it is in its own 
nature adverse to civil or religious despotism. It has 
been said that when Romanism persecutes, it accords 
with its fundamental principle, the denial of right of 
private judgment, while when Protestantism persecutes, 
it contradicts itself. So when Calvinism persecutes, it 
obeys an intrinsic absolutism; while if Arminianism 



64 Essays Reviews, and Discoukses. 



persecutes, it contradicts its own freedom and individ- 
ualism. Yet position lias often in history produced in 
all these parties palpable violations of, and discordance 
with, their principle. Romanists often become by po- 
sition asserters of ultra-democracy, and Protestants of 
absolute despotism. And so Calvinism has, historically, 
been by position the advocate for revolution, and Ar- 
minianism the asserter of authority. In fact, as Armin- 
ianism has been, as above shown, the ruling doctrine 
of the Church, and Calvinism an insurgent specialty, so 
the historical position of the first has been favorable to 
the assertion of authority, and the normal position of 
the latter has been revolt. This may be called one 
of the accidents of history. So the learned Selden, in 
his Table- Talk remarked on the curious contradic- 
tion in the English civil war, that the advocates of 
absolutism in religion were the advocates of political 
liberty, and vice versa. Yet it may, perhaps, be truly 
said, that when the religious absolutist gains the power 
he is apt to be an absolute though a conscientious despot. 
He makes a better rebel than ruler. Professor Fisher, a 
Calvinist, gives a severely true picture of the conscien- 
tious despotism of Calvin at Geneva. A similar des- 
potism, on a larger scale, in England under Cromwell, 
rendered the nation willing, by reaction, to rush into 
the depravities of the Restoration. Driven to Amer- 
ica, even while under the rule of an Arminian monarchy, 
a similar despotism, on a small scale, overspread New 
England. 

Nor was Calvinism, as Professor Fisher truly affirms, 
the advocate of liberty of conscience. Not only did Cal- 
vin himself banish Bolsec, ruin Castellio, and favor the 
execution of Servetus, but he maintained, doctrinally, 
the duty of the magistrate to punish heresy. Beza, his 
learned successor, wrote a treatise in favor of punishing 



Armixiaxism 



AMD 



Arminius. 



65 



heretics. Bogerman, the president at the Synod of 
Dort, was the translator of Beza's essay. It is but too 
evident that the Protestant Calvinists differed with the 
Romanists not about the punishment of heretics, but 
about who the heretics to be punished were. In this 
respect the Calvinism of the new Church and the Ar- 
minianism of the old were nearly upon a par. The 
new Church, however, belonged to the progressive 
order of things; but whether, finally, the Calvinism 
or the Arminianism of the new Church first actually 
proclaimed toleration is a matter of question. 

Comparative Morality. — Mr. Froude endeavors, by 
comparison, to show that Calvinism is superior to Ar- 
minianism in morals, by selecting his own examples. 
But the Arminian may, perhaps, in reply make also his 
selections. Scottish Calvinism has an unquestioned 
severity of morals; but are Scotch character and his- 
tory, as a whole, even ethically superior to the English? 
Is the morality of Presbyterianism, in its entire as- 
pect, superior to that of Moravianism, Quakerism, or 
Wesleyan Methodism ? Are our American Calvinistic 
Baptists more Christian in morals than the Free-will 
Baptists ? Is there any umpire qualified to decide 
that the devout Presbyterian is superior to the devout 
Episcopalian? Did Jonathan Edwards present a type 
of piety superior to that of Fletcher of Madeley? or 
John Calvin to that of James Arminius? Can Calvin- 
ism show a grander type of an evangelist than was John 
Wesley in England or Francis Asbury in America? 
Has she produced, in all her history, a system of evan- 
gelism as earnest, as self-sacrificing, as aggressive, as 
the itinerant ministry of English and American Meth- 
odism? Taking the entire body of Calvinism since the 
Reformation, does it excel in purity, martyrdom, doc- 
trine, and missionary enterprise the (Arminian) Church 



66 



Essays, Reviews, axd Discourses. 



of the first centuries ? If it comes to counting persons, 
has any section of the Church nobler names than Justin 
Martyr, Ignatius, Ireneeus, Origen, Athanasius, Tertul- 
lian, Jerome, Chrysostom, John of Damascus, Hincmar 
of Kheinis, Erasmus, Luther, Melanchthon, Sir Thomas 
More, Calixtus, Savonarola, Arminius, Grotius, Episco- 
pius, Limborch, Curcellaaus, John Milton, John Good- 
win, Jeremy Taylor, Cudworth, Bishop Butler, Bishop 
Bull, Bengel, Wetstein, Wesley, Fletcher, and Richard 
Watson ? 

Comparative Republicanism. — Nor did, nor does, 
Predestination, as compared with Arminianism, possess 
any peculiar affinity with republicansim against mon- 
archy. By its very nature Calvinism establishes an 
infinite and eternal distinction between different parts 
of mankind made by divine prerogative, by which one 
is born in a divine aristocracy, and the other in an eter- 
nal helpless and hopeless pariahism; while Arminianism, 
holding eveiy man equal before God, proclaims an equal 
yet resistible grace for all, a universal atonement and 
Saviour alike to all, an equal power of acceptance in all, 
a free, unpredestined chance for every man to be the ar- 
tificer of his own eternal, as well as temporal, fortunes. 
Caste, pariialism, are the characteristics of the former; 
equality, universality, republicanism, of the latter. It 
is as plain as consciousness can make any fact, that it is 
the latter that is the natural ally, not of monarchies, 
aristocracies, or hierarchies, but of regulated freedom. 
Hence, neither Luther nor Calvin was any more a repub- 
lican than Eck or Erasmus. Augustine and Gottschalk 
were good papists, and Augustinianism was as entirely 
.•it home under the tiara of Gregory the Great as under 
the cap of Bogerman — in the court of Charlemagne as in 
the camp of the Covenanter. Irrespective of their Cal- 
vinism, the Reformers every-where acted according to 



Arminianism and Armixius. 



67 



conditions. Where kings and nobles favored them, they 
favored kings and nobles ; where (as was generally the 
case) they were rejected by rank and power, and had 
nothing to make royalty and aristocracy out of, they 
fashioned a theocratic Commune, out of which modern 
political experience has picked some aids and methods 
for voluntary government. Modern experience has 
eliminated the theocracy, the intolerance, and the pre- 
destinarianism, and added the elements to make repub- 
licanism. For all this it duly thanks the Reformers, 
but does not thank their Calvinism. 

History of Arminianism. — The theology of freedom, 
essentially Arminianism, in opposition to predestination, 
necessitated volitions, and imputation of guilt to the 
innocent, is universally acknowledged to have been the 
doctrine of the entire Christian Church through its most 
glorious period, the martyr age of the first three centu- 
ries. The Calvinistic historian of theology, Hagenbach, 
says (vol. i, p. 155): "All the Greek Fathers, as well as 
the apologists Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, 
and the Latin author Minucius Felix, exalt the auton- 
omy or self determination of the human soul. They 
know nothing of any imputation of sin, except as a 
voluntary and moral self-determination is presupposed. 
Even Irenseus and Tertullian strongly insist upon this 
self-determination in the use of freedom of the will." 
Again (157): "Even the opponents of human liberty, 
as Calvin, are compelled to acknowledge this remark- 
able unanimity of the Fathers, and, in order to account 
for it, they are obliged to suppose a general illusion 
about this doctrine ! " 

Armini-ms contend that we know as well when pre- 
destination was introduced into the Church — namely, 
by Augustine — as we do when transubstantiation and 
image- worship were introduced ; that it was in the 



68 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



fourth century, when Pelagius upon one extreme made 
free-will dispense with divine grace, Augustine, on the 
other extreme, made divine grace irresistibly nullify 
free-will, and thus both lost their balance; that both 
invented dogmas never before recognized in the Church; 
that, tried by the previous mind of the Church, both 
were equally heretical ; that the heresy of one, pushed 
to extreme, becomes rationalism and pure deism — the 
heresy of the other, pushed to extreme, becomes pre- 
sumptuous antinomianism. They assert that the East- 
ern Church maintained her primitive position, neither 
Pelagian on one side nor Augustinian on the other, 
essentially in the position of modern Arminianism; that 
hence Arminianism is not a compromise, but the primi- 
tive historical position, the permanent center, rejecting 
innovations and extremes on either side; that the West- 
ern Church, in spite of the great name of Augustine, 
never became Augustinian. It is, indeed, customarily 
said by anti- Arminian writers that this was because the 
"age of systematic theology" had not ihen arrived. 
Arminians reply that a theology not only unrecognized 
during that best period of the Church, but, still more, 
a theology unanimously condemned as heretical by that 
period has little right now to lay claim to pre-eminent 
Christian orthodoxy. The Eastern Church — namely, 
the Churches of Asia, with whom the language of our 
Lord and his apostles was essentially vernacular ; the 
Greek Church, to whom the language of the New Tes- 
tament was vernacular ; and the Russian Church, em- 
bracing many millions — all inherited and retain, firmly 
and unanimously, the theology of freedom, essential 
Arminianism. The learned Calvinistic scholar, Dr. 
Shedd, in his History of Doctrines (vol. ii, p. 198), 
says: "The Augustinian anthropology was rejected in 
the East, and, though at first triumphant in the West, 



Arminianism 



AND 



Arminius. 



69 



was gradually displaced by the semi-Pelagian theory, 
or the theory of inherited evil [instead of inherited 
guilt] and synergistic [or co-operative] regeneration. 
This theory was finally stated for the papal Church in 
exact form by the Council of Trent. The Augustinian 
anthropology, though advocated in the Middle Ages 
by a few individuals like Gottschalk, Bede, Anselm, 
slumbered until the Reformation, when it was revived 
by Luther and Calvin, and opposed by the papists." It 
will thus be seen, on a review of the universal Church, 
in all ages, how small though respectable a minority 
Augustinianism, before the Reformation, ever was. 
With minor exceptions, Arminianism was the doctrine 
of the universal Church. 

The accuracy of Dr. Shedd's statement of the gen- 
eral non-existence of Auo-ustinianism during the Middle 
Ages is not invalidated by the fact of the great author- 
ity of Augustine's name, arising from the powerful 
genius and voluminous writings of the man. It was no 
proof that a man was truly Augustinian because he be- 
longed to the "Augustinian order," or quoted Augus- 
tine's authority. Such schoolmen as Bernard, Anselm, 
and Peter Lombard modified Augustine's doctrine ma- 
terially; Bonaventura and Duns Scotus were essentially 
Arminians, and Hincmar, of Rheims, and Savonarola 
literally so. Gottschalk, the high predestinarian, was 
condemned for heresy, and Thomas Bradwardine, the 
"second Gottschalk," made complaints, doubtless over- 
strained, that in his day " almost the whole world had 
become Pelagian." 

At the Reformation, however, we encounter the phe- 
nomenon that all the eminent leaders at first not only 
adopted, but even exaggerated, the absolutism of Au- 
gustine. This might seem strange, for it was appar- 
ently natural that the absolute papacy should identify 



70 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



itself with the absolute, and that asserters of freedom 
would have stood on the free-will theology. The twin 
doctrines of the supremacy of Scripture and of justifica- 
tion by faith were amply sufficient, without predestina- 
tion, for their purpose to abolish the whole system of 
popish corruption. The former dethroned alike the 
authority of tradition and the popedom ; the latter 
swept away alike the mediations of Mary, saints, and 
priests. But the first heroic impulse of reform tends 
to magnify the issues to their utmost dimensions. The 
old free-will theology belonged universally to the old 
historic Church, and was identified by the first Reform- 
ers with its corruptions. Luther at first, in his reply to 
Erasmus On the Bondage of the Will, uttered fatal- 
isms that probably had hardly ever before been heard 
in the Christian Church, and perhaps it would be hard 
to find a Calvinist at the present day who would adopt 
the trenchant predestinarian utterances of Calvin. Un- 
der the indoctrinations of these leaders, especially of 
Calvin at Geneva, the absolute doctrines were diffused 
and formed into the creeds of Germany, the Nether- 
lands, France, England, and Switzerland. But in Ger- 
many the "second sober thought" of Melanchthon, who 
at first coincided with Luther, receded from predestina- 
tion, and Melanchthon himself intimates that Luther 
receded with him ; so that the Lutherans are now essen- 
tially Arminian. In the Netherlands the same " second 
thought," led by Arminius himself, was suppressed by 
State power. In France, Protestantism, which was 
Calvinistic, was overwhelmed in blood. In England 
the Calvinism was generally of a gentle type, and the 
same " second thought " was awakened by the Ar- 
minian writings of Grotius and Episcopius diffused 
through Europe. And as the English Church gradual- 
ly inclined to the ancient high episcopacy of the old 



Arminianism and Arminius. 



71 



Church, so it adopted the ancient Arminianism. Cal- 
vinism, persecuted and oppressed, overthrew monarchy 
and Church, and for a brief period ruled with hardly 
less intolerance, until, overthrown in turn, Calvinism 
took refuge in America, and laid foundations here. 
Even here past sufferings did not teach tolerance, and 
that doctrine had to be learned from checks and lessons 
administered by surrounding sources. Calvinism has, 
nevertheless, here acted a noble part in our Christian 
civilization. It, perhaps, about equally divides the 
evangelic Church with Arminianism. 

Arminianism, proper and Protestant, came into exist- 
ence under the severe persecution by Dutch Calvinism, 
in which the great and good Arminius himself was a 
virtual martyr. The Synod of Dort, the standard coun- 
cil of the Calvinistic faith, made itself subservient to 
the unprincipled and sanguinary usurper Maurice; and 
even during its sessions the judicial murder of the great 
Arminian and republican statesman Olden Barneveldt 
was triumphantly announced at Dort, to overawe the 
Arminians at the synod, who were bravely maintaining 
their cause under the leadership of the eloquent Epis- 
copius. Then followed the banishment of Episcopius, 
the imprisonment of Grotius, the ejection of hundreds 
of Arminian ministers from their pulpits, and the firing 
of soldiers upon the religious assemblies of Arminian 
worshipers. The great Arminian writers of Holland, 
Episcopius, Grotius, and Limborch, are claimed by Ar- 
minian writers to be the first public proclaimers of the 
doctrine of liberty of conscience in Europe, as those two 
Arminian Puritans, John Milton and John Goodwin, 
were its earliest proclaimers in England. 

Wesleyan Methodism is now by all admitted to be a 
great modern Armini.in development. Beginning most 
humbly as a half-unconscious awakening amid the gen- 



72 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



eral religious chill of Protestantism, it has not only- 
quickened the religious life of the age, but gathered, it 
is said, twelve millions of worshipers into its congre- 
gations throughout the world. Its theology is very, 
definite, and very nearly the exact theology of James 
Arminius himself, and of the first three centuries. Cra- 
dled in both the Arminianism and High-Churchism of 
the English establishment, Wesley's maturer years ear- 
nestly approved the Arminianism, but severed it from 
the High-Churchism. The connection between Armin- 
ianism and High-Churchism is hereby clearly revealed 
to be historical and incidental rather than intrinsic or 
logical. Yet, even after adopting the doctrine that 
every Church has the right to shape its own govern- 
ment, as a lover of the primitive, post- apostolic Church, 
as well as from notions of Christian expediency, Wesley 
preferred, and provided for American Methodism, an 
episcopal form of government. Arminian Methodism 
has, in little more than a century of her existence, ap- 
parently demonstrated that the Augustinian "systematic 
theology" is unnecessary, and what it deems the primi- 
tive theology amply sufficient for the production of a 
profound depth of piety, a free ecclesiastical system, an 
energetic missionary enterprise, and a rapid evangelical 
success. She exhibits in her various phases every form 
of government, from the most decisive system of episco- 
pacy to the simplest Congregationalism, all voluntarily 
adopted, and changeable at will. The problems she 
has thus wrought suggest the thought that the free, 
simple theology of the earliest age may be the universal 
theology of the latest. 

Personal History of Arminius. — The name of Ar- 
minius in his native language was Jacobus Hermans, 
identical with Herman, the name of the hero of Ger- 
many, who destroyed the Roman legions under Varus. 



Arminianism and Arminius. 



73 



And as this name was transformed into Arminius by 
Tacitus and other Roman writers, so, in accordance 
with the custom of the age when Latin was the lan- 
guage of current literature, this name was Latinized, 
and has come down in modern English as James Ar- 
minius. He was born in 1560 at Oude water (" Old 
water"), a small town in the Southern Netherlands. He 
lost his father in early childhood, and, his mother being 
left in straitened circumstances, the promising intellect 
of the boy so attracted the attention of patrons that he 
was taken to school at Marburg. When fifteen years 
of age his native town, Oudewater, was taken by the 
Spaniards, and his mother, brother, and sister were all 
massacred, leaving him the sole survivor of his family. 
He was sent by his patrons to the new university at 
Leyden, where he remained six years. Such was his 
proficiency that the city of Amsterdam adopted him as 
her vesterling or foster-child, to be educated at the pub- 
lic expense, being bound by a written obligation to be 
at the command of the city through life. He studied 
at Geneva under Beza, as well as at Basel under Gryn- 
eas. At the latter place he was offered a doctorate, 
but declined the offer on account of his youth. By 
Beza he was commended to Amsterdam in high terms. 
He then went to Italy to become accomplished in 
philosophy under Zerabella, and, having visited Rome 
and the other principal cities, returned to Amsterdam, 
where he was installed minister at the age of twenty- 
eight. 

Arminius's ministry in Amsterdam, of fourteen years' 
duration, forms the second period of his life. His 
learning and eloquence were rapidly rendering him one 
of the leading theologians and preachers of his age. 
He was of middling size, had dark, piercing eyes, and 
voice light but clear, and possessing a winning mellow- 



74 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



ness. His manners were magnetic, and he had the 
power of fastening firm friends. He was condescend- 
ing to the lowly, and a sympathizing guide to the relig- 
ious inquirer. At the same time he was an independent 
seeker and follower of truth. 

In 1585 the extreme predestinarianism prevalent in 
the Netherlands had been for ten years so effectively 
attacked by Richard Coornhert, an eminent patriotic 
and acute layman of Amsterdam, that Arminius was 
invited by the city to refute him. In a debate at Delft 
between Coornhert and two high Calvinistic clergymen, 
the latter were so hard pressed that they yielded, and 
took the lower or sublapsarian ground, and published a 
pamphlet against the higher view. The extreme Cal- 
vinists called upon Martin Lydius, professor of theology 
in Friesland, to refute them, but he handed over the 
task to Arminius, who had thus a double request on 
his hands. He bravely undertook the task, but wns 
soon convinced of the untenableness of either the higher 
or lower predestination. At the expense of an igno- 
minious failure in even attacking Coornhert, he resolved 
to pursue the light of ljonest conviction. Avoiding the 
entire subject in public, he prosecuted his investiga- 
tions with earnest study. Yet, in lecturing on Romans 
vii, having given the non-Calvinistic interpretation, he 
found himself generally assailed by the high Calvinists 
as a Pelagian and Socinian. He was arraigned before 
the ecclesiastical courts, where he successfully defended 
himself on the ground that, though adverse to the prev- 
alent opinions, his interpretation contradicted nothing in 
the standards; namely, the Belgic Confession and the 
Catechism. Being questioned as to predestination, he 
declined to answer, as no fact was alleged against him. 

In prosecuting his inquiries he determined to consult 
privately the best theologians of the day. He com- 



Akminianism and Arminius. 



75 



menced a confidential correspondence with Professor 
Francis Junius, of the University of Leyden, the most 
eminent of the Dutch theologians. He was delighted 
to find how far Junius coincided with him, but when 
he addressed to Junius the arguments for still more 
advanced views, the professor kept the letter by him 
unanswered for six years, when he died. The friends 
of Arminius believed that this silence arose from the 
fact that Junius found more than he could answer or 
was willing to admit. Unfortunately, this correspond- 
ence was inadvertently exposed by Junius to discovery, 
and was used to the disadvantage of Arminius. Armin- 
ius, also, having received a treatise in favor of predes- 
tination by Professor Perkins, of Cambridge, prepared 
an epistle to him, but was prevented by Perkins's death 
from sending it. His letters, both to Junius and Per- 
kins, are embodied in his published works, and, whatever 
may be thought of the validity of the argument, no one 
will deny that in candor, courtesy, and Christian dignity 
they are hardly to be surpassed. 

On the death of Junius, the curators of the University 
of Leyden looked to Arminius as his successor. The 
reluctant consent of Amsterdam being at length gained, 
Arminius assented. But the predestinarians, led by 
Gomarus, senior professor of theology at Leyden, op- 
posed his election. After a long series of strifes, Ar- 
minius offered to meet Gomarus and satisfy his objec- 
tions. The meeting took place, and Gomarus, admitting 
that he had judged Arminius by hearsay, after Arminius 
had fully declared his entire opposition to Pelagiauism 
and Socinianism, fully renounced his objections. So far 
as predestination was concerned, each professor was to 
deliver his own sentiments with moderation, and all col- 
lision with the other was to be avoided ; and Arminius 
was thereupon elected. 



76 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



The six years of his Leyden professorship, closing 
with his death, are the most important yet troublous 
period of his career. The terms of peace were broken 
within the first year by Gomarus, who delivered a vio- 
lent public harangue on predestination in terms of 
insult to Arminius, who was personally present ; to 
which the latter prepared a refutation clothed in terms 
of personal respect toward his opponent. Gomarus 
afterward confessed that he could easily live at peace 
with Arminius but for the clergy and Churches, who 
w ere intensely hostile to his liberal doctrines. Their 
Kelgic Confession, Calvinistic as it was, was sacred in 
their hearts as being the banner under which they had 
fought the battle of civil and religious liberty against 
Spain and popery; and they now, alas! were making it 
the instrument of religious intolerance. Arminius was 
held as invalidating that Confession, and so was every- 
where traduced by the clergy as a papist, a Pelagian, 
and a Coornherter. Yet, really, the doctrines he taught 
were essentia ly the doctrines of Saint Chrysostom, Me- 
lanchttion, Jeremy Taylor, and John Wesley. In regard 
to the Confession, he ever treated it with reverence, and 
only claimed the right of that same liberality of inter- 
pretation which Lutherans exercised with the Augsburg 
Confession— a liberality similar to that which the En- 
glish clergy now exercise in regard to the seventeenth 
of their Thirty-nine Articles. A voluntary Church may, 
like any other voluntary association, be, if it pleases, 
stringent in its interpretations, but a State Church, which 
strains all to a tight interpretation of a specific creed 
under pain of State disabilities, runs into religious des- 
potism. This was, therefore, a genuine contest for 
religious liberty. Arminius was proscribed by the 
clergy, harassed by irresponsible deputations, and his 
students were subjected to persecutions and exclusions 



Aeminianism and Arminius. 



77 



from the ministry. The more intelligent laity, includ- 
ing the magistracy, and especially the chief magistrate, 
Olden Barne veldt, were favorable to Arminius, who at 
length appealed to the national legislature (called the 
States-.General) for protection. That body appointed a 
committee or council, who, having heard both Gomarus 
and Arminius in full, reported that the latter taught 
nothing but what could be tolerated. Before the States- 
General themselves Arminius delivered a full oration, 
expounding his entire views, which is published in the 
American edition of his works. The clergy demanded 
the appointment of a national synod, consisting purely 
of ecclesiastics, but the States-General, well knowing 
what would be the fate of Arminius in their hands, 
refused. Under the constant pressure of these years 
of persecution the gentle spirit of Arminius at length 
sunk. He was taken from the bloody times that fol- 
lowed the Synod of Dort. His nervous system was 
prostrated, and, attended by his faithful pupil, the aft- 
erward celebrated Episcopius, he died in the faith he 
had maintained, October 19, 1609, a martyr to his views 
of truth. 



78 Essays, Reviews, and Discoukses. 



ARMINIAN VIEW OF THE FALL AND REDEMPTION. 

It is a pleasant fact that our Calvinian brethren of 
the elder school, as their eyes become cleared of preju- 
dice arising from want of information, express no little 
gratification that we are so orthodox on the subject of 
original sin and human depravity. The writer of a 
certain book not much known to fame, though locally 
popular with a portion of that class of theologians, and 
indorsed, in fact, by the Princeton Review, quotes some 
of our standard doctrinal statements and adds the fol- 
lowing remarks: "The great matter of surprise is that 
such correct and scriptural views of man's fall and its 
far-reaching results have been incorporated into a sys- 
tem otherwise Arminian." He speaks of our doctrine 
as an "attempt to mingle iron and clay," and of the 
"great inconsistency of this attempt to patch Armini- 
anism with shreds of Calvinistic doctrine." Now, how- 
ever it may be with this writer, his indorsing reviewer 
cannot 1 but know that such language is about the 
reverse of historic truth. The doctrine of depravity 
and the fall, as central to an Arminian system, is older 
than Calvinism. It was a doctrine of the first three 
centuries of Christian history. It is not Arminians who 
have patched it into their system; it is Calvinists who 
have girt it round with predestination. The Augus- 
tinian and Edwardian innovations of predestination and 
of necessitated will were not the orthodoxy of the early 
Church. Of these Calvinian novelties of predestination 
and fatalism we can mark the first introduction into the 
Church, just as we know the introduction of the papal 
novelties of ti ansubstantiation and the celibacy of the 
clergy. As the Reformers arrived at a purer Church 
by discarding the inventions of popery, so our Armin- 



Aeminian View of Fall and Redemption. 79 



ians arrived at a purer theology by eliminating the ac- 
cretions of predestination. Both returned toward the 
simplicity and truth of the primitive ages. Both the 
Arminians and Wesley were conscious and boasted of 
the fact. We place ourselves upon the same vantage 
ground. Neology is with our brethren opposite ; with 
us are antiquity and genuine orthodoxy. 

The doctrines of the lall, depravity, and redemption, 
as collected in systematic form from the scattered 
statements of Scripture, present, at first glance, a some- 
what complex aspect. The simple Christian reader of 
the Bible will find and feel all their elements in the 
sacred word, and yet will find it difficult, without some 
patient study, to comprehend them even when pre- 
sented in synthetic form. The master-workman in 
Christian truth fee's the necessity, at successive periods, 
of review and revisal of the modes of statement in the 
light of fresh investigations, and especially in the light 
of the latest opposition. This is the benefit that the 
assaults of error confer upon truth: that they compel 
fresh and more fundamental investigations by its de- 
fenders, and thereby produce clearer views and more 
explicit statements. 

Those doctrines are so plentifully assumed or stated 
in Scripture, in such varieties of form, that very few 
persons entertaining strict and reverent views of 
Scripture inspiration and authority can refuse to accept 
them. The Scripture statement that " in Adam all 
die" (1 Cor. xv, 22) indissolubly connects the mor- 
tality of our entire race by a line of descent with 
Adam. That sin underlies this mortality in all cases is 
clear from many statements; as, for instance, that 
"death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned ;" 
and that " by one man's disobedience the many were 
made sinners.'' Actually or conceptually every human 



80 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



being, adult or infant, that dies is held a sinner. Sin, 
somehow, underlies all human death. That to this 
state of things a great redemption is adjusted, all 
strictly scriptural theology agrees; but the details of 
the adjustment the ordinary Christian would find it 
difficult to state, and learned theologians have long 
been accustomed to discuss. 

Bishop Butler has suggested the important thought, 
that the great events of the resurrection and immor- 
tality, though stupendously miraculous, may still be 
also a truly natural train of events. So also, perhaps, 
a clearer view of the great facts of the fall and ruin 
of our race may be obtained by contemplating them 
on their naturalistic and their theodicic or judicial 
sides. 

The Naturalistic View. Man, like every other 
being, must come into existence under the operation of 
universal laws and secondary causations. It is of no 
present use to inquire how it was right for the Deity 
to frame a certain set of regulations around a given 
being, provided those regulations are fundamental and 
universal, and, as such, necessary to the existence of a 
rightful general system. It is enough to know that 
such fundamental laws, inflexible, even though bearing 
hard upon the individual whose well-being they cross, 
and even limiting the normal divine action, are neces- 
sary to the existence of any rational system, mundane 
or supermundane. Every species and every individual 
must come into the system under its laws or be ex- 
cluded. Of this our earthly living system, a funda- 
mental and universal regulation is the law of descent. 
Man is but a species of the great living generative genus. 
By that law the nature of the primogenitor is the nature 
of all his generations. This law man shares w T ith all 
the lineages of living nature, animal or vegetable 



Arminian View of Fall and Redemption. 81 

Each species of beast, bird, fish, serpent, consists of a 
myriad of individuals who are sharers of one great 
capital of specific vital force. Of the human race, for 
instance, each individual of the whole number is a single 
vessel containing his modicum of the one great ocean 
of human blood. And not only is the composition of 
matter circumscribed within certain limits, both of sub- 
stance and form, but the soul stuff, too, is confined 
within certain limits of essence and character. As is 
the parent, such is the child; as is the first progenitor, 
such is the entire posterity. 

The commencement of an order with its laws, how- 
ever miraculous, may be viewed in a naturalistic aspect. 
It was natural that if the first man, modeled to the idea 
of a perfect humanity, had stood at that high grade, 
his whole lineage would have been the successive copies 
of the same model. Even though some descendant had 
sinned and fell, it is not probable that the level of his 
offspring, if begotten, would have sunk to a lower 
grade. The whole anthem of human history would 
then have been pitched and carried through upon that 
same exalted, transcendental key. If by his own im- 
prudent act, violating the laws of his higher being, he 
shut off all communion with higher natures, between 
whom and terrene nature he was the natural inter- 
mediate, it would not be unnatural, even if its singu- 
larity made it miraculous, that the same act should 
depreciate his fresh and plastic nature to an altogether 
lower model. By the laws of descent, therefore, the 
fall of the progenitor would be the depravation of the 
race. 

This depravation might be threefold: corporeal, 
psychological, and psychical. 

1. Corporeal. Separated from the higher nourish- 
ment (perhaps the tree of life), by which the organism 
6 



82 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



was able to resist collision and disintegration, its frame- 
work becomes subject to decay, damage, and disso- 
lution. Its particles and parts become displaced, lose 
their organic properties, and the system breaks and 
crumbles from around the spiritual being, panting for 
his own release, yet shuddering in anticipation of an 
unknown future. This is disease and death. Man by 
the fall is lineally mortal. " In Adam all die." 

2. Psychological. Disastrous must be the effect upon 
the mind. Be it that no one of the faculties was lost 
(though that is more than we can know), yet how hns 
their first immortal vigor departed, and how deranged 
their pristine order ? Intellect, conscience, moral feel- 
ing, all are dim, and the will no longer executes, with 
steady, unvarying purpose, their high suggestions. 
Passion, appetite, heated impulse obtain the ascendant. 
That blessed Spirit whose presence enabled order and 
right to reign has been closed off. Love to God is no 
longer felt; and as it cannot be a motive for action, so 
no action can be right and pleasing to God. The way 
of truth is now unknown, as the way of right is un- 
loved. Man is still a free agent, but free only amid 
various alternatives of evil. The way of right and the 
pleasing to God are excluded equally from his knowl- 
edge, his affections, and his will. To the truly good he 
is no longer objectively a free agent. 

3. Psychical. But his soul (taking the word as 
synonymous with spirit) is still immortal, and thereby 
this state of nature must be eternal. Unless arbitrarily 
terminated, or redemptively restored, the soul must, 
from the very laws of its nature, suffer an immortality 
of evil. Collective living men must form a community, 
of whose evil nature we can form but an indistinct 
idea. Demoniac passion must transform the earth into 
a hell. Lust, or the lower forms of love, must serve 



Arminian View of Fall and Redemption. 83 



to perpetuate the race. Enough merely of conscience 
would remain to make the wretch feel that all is 
wrong, and enough of intellect to assure him that 
there is no hope. And the departing spirit, looking 
out into a spiritual universe, in which there is no 
proper room provided for its existence, would see 
that in any place its only prospect is eternal despair. 
Here, then, we have the three naturalistic aspects of 
death, temporal, spiritual, eternal, hereditarily result- 
ing from the fall. Be it remarked, that these results 
accrue from fundamental laws and natural second 
causes. 

In the system as thus described, the exclusion of all 
free agency for good excludes all responsibility for the 
absence of good. There can be no obligation to put 
forth a volition never in the agent's power. There can 
be no guilt for not obeying a motive which was never 
in the agent's reach ; nor can there be any guilt for the 
existence of the nature which excludes, throughout the 
being's whole existence, the power of the volition and 
the motive, provided alw T ays that neither that nature 
nor its incapacity is self-superinduced. The man no 
more made himself than he made Satan; and he is no 
more responsible for his own nature than for Satan's 
nature. He can no more reverse the law of motives 
than he can reverse the law of gravitation. Obliged 
to choose in the midst of evils alone, as a fish is obliged 
to swim in water, he is no more obliged to will himself 
into the good than a sunfish is obligated to fly into the 
air. Hence his evil, though a moral evil, is not a re- 
sponsible evil. His sin is such only as being opposite 
to the divine law, not as subjecting him to its just 
penalty. 

One theodicic question will now no longer be sup- 
pressed. Would it be right for the Deity to continue 



84 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 

such a race in temporal and eternal evil and misery ? 
So far as its immortality is concerned, the plea of 
natural law cannot be adduced in justification of its 
eternal misery. Man, corporeal and on earth, is not a 
species under a genus of naturally immortal beings. 
He stands alone and single. Let us conclude, therefore, 
that his immortal misery can scarce be just. His tem- 
poral misery can only be justified, so far as we can see, 
under the law of compensation. The suffering of any 
creature or species may be justified under the proviso 
that it has such an amount of happiness that its own 
choice would be for existence rather than for non-exist- 
ence. Such a being makes a fair virtual agreement 
with his Creator to suffer the ills for the sake of the 
happiness of life. Not only Adam, but every pri- 
mordial progenitor of a race of creatures, is a " federal 
head." Not with Adam alone, but with every pro- 
genitor, was there a divine "covenant;" and perhaps 
no more with Adam than with any other progenitor. 
By the principle of compensation alone, therefore, can 
we conceive that even the temporal existence of the 
race can be justified. But when we consider that the 
main end of the human system is probation, we shall 
at once see that the very object of the existence of the 
race, with the cessation of free moral agency and re- 
sponsibility, is lost. In such case the whole purpose 
would terminate in Adam himself, and the race would 
be a failure. 

Unless, then, creation shall prove abortive, there 
must take place a renovation, and such a renovation as 
shall complete the restoration of the system by a proc- 
ess of probation. Such a restorer must, 1. So suspend 
the sentence of death upon Adam as to warrant the 
natural continuity of the existence of the race. 2. He 
must so restore the Divine Spirit, the means of divine 



Arminian View of Fall and Redemption. 85 



knowledge, and the possibility of holy motive as that 
free agency in spiritual things shall reappear. 3. He 
must open the avenue through which all who rightfully 
use their agency may attain to a full and eternal resto- 
ration of the primitive Adamic state. This grand proc- 
ess will, in its full development, abound, in scenes and 
events of wonderful interest. 

The Theodicic or Judicial View. All these proc- 
esses, while moving under the law of cause and eifeet, 
are still regulated by the laws of a just government. 
The laws of nature are the laws of God. The laws of 
our mundane nature are but part and parcel of the laws 
of a nature co-extensive with the government of God. 
From this high stand-point we behold the moral and 
the natural law coincide, if not become identified. The 
fall, as the result of the violation of the divine law, 
even though it were a process of cause and effect, was 
also a process of sin and penalty. It was as truly 
judicial as it was natural. The natural certainty of 
death, corporeal, moral, and eternal, was coincident 
with the sentence of the threefold death. That sentence 
was literally pronounced in the second person singular 
upon Adam alone. Its literal expression implied an 
immediate execution, leaving no time for the propaga- 
tion of a race. Its execution upon him alone would 
have been its full literal and final fulfillment. But such 
a failure of any grand result from the creation of Adam 
was not the wisest course. By the introduction of a 
Redeemer with a new probation for the race, with a 
final restoration for all who fulfill the conditions of 
their probations to a more than Adamic glory, and the 
exhibition of the nature of sin and justice before the 
universe in the penalty of the finally perverse, a new, 
eventful, and stupendous chapter would be added to 
the divine history. 



86 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



If a Redeemer shall appear, qualified by a death in- 
finitely more valuable than the death of Adam and all 
his race, to limit, to suspend, or to reverse the applica- 
tion of the law in such manner as to secure ultimate 
restoration under the laws of free agency and pro- 
bation, he will, we may suppose, follow the outlines 
previously described in the naturalistic process. 1. God 
will, in view of his process of restoration, permit the 
continuity of the race. 2. By the return of the Holy 
Spirit to every soul of man as soon as born, by the rev- 
elation of the system of divine truth to his developed 
intellect, holy motives become possible, the way of 
truth becomes clear, and man becomes a free agent in 
things spiritual and eternal. Yet the intrinsic and 
essential nature of the fallen race comes into existence 
unchanged; and the individual is met by the super- 
natural restorative operation, in the order of nature, 
subsequent to the moment of his commenced existence. 
Mankind are held, therefore, as still depraved, and as 
prospectively certain evil doers. But as this nature is 
overlaid with a power of spiritual free agency, their 
evil doings, which were before necessary and irrespon- 
sible, become now free and guilty. They are hel !, 
therefore, not only as presumptively evil doers, but pre- 
sumptively responsible sinners. Adam, indeed, renders 
them sinners, but it is only in view of Christ that God 
holds them responsible as sinners. If he had not come 
they would not have known responsible sin. And, 
inasmuch as all are presumptively and prospectively 
sinners, so sin is imputed to them before they commit 
sin. They are sinners by presumptive nature before 
they are sinners by action; and, as such, a penal quality 
is conceptually cognized in their natural disease, mor- 
tality, and death. This unrevoked liability to penal 
death results from the fact that the Redeemer is quali- 



Akminian View of Fall and Redemption. 87 



fied by office to limit the extent of the remedy applied. 
Without the Redeemer, they would have seminally 
died in Adam's death. Left to pure nature, they would 
have died under the law of cause and effect — a natural 
effect justifiable only under the law of compensation or 
virtual covenant. Under the redemptive administration 
they are held to die as presumptive, that is, imputative 
sinners; and that whether they are actual sinners, or 
infants who have never attained responsible age, and 
upon whom no actual sin, guilt, or condemnation is 
chargeable. 

Under the same administration, held as presumptive, 
and, therefore, imputative sinners, they are conceptually 
held as under the sentence of eternal death. This is 
the legal position of all whom justification, either un- 
conditional, as in the case of infants, or conditional, as 
in the case of believers, has placed from under the per- 
manent sentence. This result, so far as a natural effect, 
would take place under the process of pure nature. It 
would take place under an administration of pure 
justice only in the person of Adam. It takes place as 
a universal fact only conceptively under the redemptive 
administration. It actually and finally takes place with 
those only who misuse their free agency, and defeat in 
regard to themselves the purpose of restoration. In 
them the eternal laws both of nature and of justice are 
sternly fulfilled. 

What, then, by this view, are the benefits conferred 
upon the race by the Redeemer ? 

1. The race is rescued from seminally suffering the 
literal infliction of the sentence of temporal, spiritual, 
and eternal death in the person of Adam. 2. It is not 
rescued from eternal death naturalistically resulting to 
' the entire race ; for such a result would be precluded 
by the divine justice. But from the race, as surviving 



88 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



and perpetuated, the obstacles to moral freedom and 
responsible ability in spiritual things are removed. 
Thus the basis of a just probation is laid. 3. Though 
the individual, as born, is not delivered from the im- 
pending malediction, so but that temporal death and 
conditional liability to eternal death still remain, yet 
that malediction is underlaid with a provision securing 
salvation as a certainty previous to the commission of 
actual and responsible sin. 4. The great and most ob- 
vious fact is, that hereby there is established a system 
by which all who, under the guidance and aids of the 
redemptive system, abstain from actual sin in the use 
of their free agency, or who, by repentance, renounce 
their sins and accept the redemption, will attain a full 
restoration, and perhaps even a higher glory than was 
lost in Adam. 

Such being the restorative system, the question is 
raised by our Calvinistic brethren whether this can 
truly be called a system or a doctrine of grace. This 
is the issue by them universally made. It is made, 
however, by the two great classes of Calvinists, the 
new and the old, on nearly opposite grounds. Both, 
indeed, affirm, what we deny, that God might have 
brought the whole human race into existence without a 
Saviour, with a full certainty of eternal death upon the 
whole; and the grace of the Redeemer, in their view, 
consists in his rescuing a part of the race, previously 
selected, from that destiny, and leaving the rest under 
its power. The justice of that destiny is maintained 
by the new school, on the ground of the existence of a 
certain transcendental natural ability which all men 
possess of doing right through their whole existence, 
even without a Saviour and without a Holy Spirit, but 
which no one ever did or ever will exercise. With this 
phantasm of an ability we have nothing at the present 



Arminian View of Fall and Redemption. 89 

time to do, except to reject it as a very shadowy basis 
for any just responsibility, or any proper justification 
for the infliction of eternal death upon failure. By the 
old school it is maintained, on the other hand, that it 
would be simply just for God to bring the whole 
human race into actual existence without free agency 
in spiritual things, under full necessity to sin, and then 
consign them to everlasting death. The grace of the 
Saviour consists, according to these, in rescuing a 
chosen part of mankind from that condition. With 
this last view rests our present issue. 

The writer to whom we have alluded raises much 
outcry against the " misrepresentations " and " declama- 
tions " practiced upon his doctrines by Methodist 
preachers and writers. We think misrepresentation of 
such a view is now not only wicked, but very unneces- 
sary. Representation as it is, not misrepresentation, 
would, we should suppose, be sufficient to banish it 
from the belief of any rational being. If . it be true 
that it is divinely just to create one being bad or a race 
bad, and then damn them for being bad, then it would 
not be unjust to create all beings under the same con- 
ditions. That is, God might justly create a universe of 
beings morally and unchangeably bad, and then the next 
moment damn them to all eternity for being bad as he 
made them I ! Such a view, we are constrained to say, 
is a disgrace to Christian theology, a dishonor to the 
human intellect. 

Our repudiation of this dark caricature of the divine 
government is no extenuation of the true evils of the 
fall. It is not true, as intimated by the above writer, 
that we maintain that " original sin is no sin, but a very 
innocent, harmless thing, which none but a merciless 
tyrant would ever consider deserving of punishment." 
Original sin is a sin, though not in Adam's posterity 



90 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



a responsible sin until sanctioned by actual sin. It 
would have resulted in the eternal death of Adam, 
and all the race in him, but for the Redeemer. It 
results in the temporal death (rendered just by com- 
pensation) of all. It results in eternal death upon all 
who, by unrepentant actual sin, accept its guilt and 
penalty. 

Using the writer above mentioned as a convenient 
provider, we may arrange and reduce the Cal\ inistic 
objections to our system upon these points to six. 
Of these six, three deny the necessity of the power to 
avoid sin in order to responsibility for sin ; the second 
three deny the grace of bestoioing a free agency upon 
fallen man. The first three may be condensed into 
the following sentence: If the eternal punishment of 
the non-free agent were injustice, then, 1. Christ died 
to prevent injustice; 2. The malediction of the law falls 
upon the guiltless; and, 3. God lias threatened a pen- 
alty which he would not execute. The second three 
may be thus condensed: The bestowment of free agency 
upon the fallen, race is no act of grace because, 1. That 
free agency is a condition to all requirement of 
duty, and to all responsibility for the non-performance; 
because, 2. Free agency through the agent's misuse be- 
comes the greatest curse; and because, 3. The re- 
demption is needed to justify the existence of the 
present state of human suffering. We take these in 
their order. 

I. Objections which deny the need of free agency in 
order to responsibility and just eternal penalty. 

First Objection. If to punish the race in their fallen 
condition, devoid of ability to obey the law, were un- 
just without a gracious ability through the atonement, 
then Christ died to prevent a divine injustice. The 
writer quotes with approbation Dr. Fisk's admission 



Akminian View of Fall and Redemption. 91 



that fallen man has no natural free agency in spiritual 
things; but when Dr. Fisk adds that nevertheless 
" through the grace of the Gospel all are born free 
from condemnation," the writer exclaims: 

" Which is about the same as to say that man is en- 
abled 1 by grace ' to escape a condemnation which, 
being previously unavoidable, it would have been mer- 
ciless tyranny to execute. A wondrous act of grace, 
truly, to assist the sinner to avoid a punishment which 
none but a tyrant could inflict! A strange idea of the 
grace of the Gospel, that it comes in to render men 
capable of sinning, deserving of punishment for their 
sin, and liable to a 'condemnation' which, but for this 
grace, a righteous God could not justly execute upon 
any descendant of the apostate pair! " 

Let it be here remarked in reply, that the-writer fully 
agrees with the truthfulness of our description of man's 
utter loss of spiritual free agency, objectively, by the 
ruin of the fall. There is no issue upon this point. 
He indorses this view as good Calvinism, in contradic- 
tion, as we before remarked, to the historical fact that 
it formed the central part of an Arminian doctrine long 
before it was appropriated and surrounded with Cal- 
vinistic borderings. The real issue with these theolo- 
gians is in regard to the need of a restored free agency 
in order to responsible sin and penalty. They deny 
such a need, and thus deny that power to volitional act 
is necessary in order to obligation to the act. They 
deny that the power to avoid the sin is necessary in 
order to a responsibility for the sin. They thus deny a 
Moral Axiom. The acceptance of such a denial by 
the intelligent religious world is impossible. An indoc- 
trinated class may, by force of education and authority, 
be induced to suppress the dictates of an axiom. But 
happily upon this clear point the dictate of the moral 



92 Essays, Reviews, and Discoueses. 



sense is so obvious as to be the dictate of the common 
sense. The dogma of a narrow school cannot be the 
sentiment of a free, healthy-minded people. Penalty 
upon a race congenitally possessed of no free agency 
would, by catholic consent, be " a punishment that none 
but a tyrant could inflict." 

But Arminianism does not maintain that Christ died 
to rescue men from any such penalty. It holds that 
such a penalty would be unjust, and therefore could in 
no case have been inflicted. Full well does this writer 
know that such is our doctrine, for he elsewhere quotes 
from our standard writers a full statement of it. We 
do not admit t/tat the punishment upon the morally im- 
potent race was a contingency morally possible. Had 
not Christ died, we believe that the full and literal exe- 
cution of the sentence would have taken place in the per- 
son of Adam. Perfectly groundless, then, is the infer- 
ence that Christ died to save us from God's "injustice." 

Second Objection. If to punish non-free agents is 
unjust, then the malediction of the whole law falls 
upon the guiltless. To substantiate this statement, the 
writer quotes from Dr. Foster's excellent work, Ob- 
ject) oiis to Calvinism, a statement that the "born cor- 
rupt " " cannot be guilty " for being born so, nor the 
necessitatedly corrupt for remaining so. He further 
quotes from the Methodist Magazine a very true state- 
ment, that men may be liable, indeed, to temporal con- 
sequences from Adam's sin and guilt, but cannot be 
guilty of them so as to be deserving of eternal punish- 
ment. We accept both quotations as probably correctly 
made, as they announce sound doctrine. He thereupon 
quotes Watson as affirming that " men are born under 
the whole malediction," consisting of "death — spiritual, 
temporal, eternal." By the first two of these three 
quotations he claims to prove that we hold the race to 



Arminian View of Fall and Redemption. 93 

be hereditarily guiltless; by the last that we hold the 
guiltless race to be under malediction, and so punished. 
Clear, then, to him is the inference that, by our theol- 
ogy, the whole penalty rests upon the guiltless. 

When Mr. Watson affirmed that we are " born under 
the whole malediction " of the law, he did not affirm 
any more than we that the malediction lay upon the 
man at birth in an unconditioned form. Between the 
overlying malediction and the man is interposed the 
grace of the atonement, limiting and conditionating the 
contact of the penalty upon the being. And the male- 
diction is, by our view, precisely conformed to the 
nature of the guilt. Where the guilt is actual and 
personal, the malediction and the penalty are actual 
and personal. Where the guilt is merely legal or pre- 
sumptive and imputative, the malediction and the pen- 
alty are merely legal or presumptive and imputative. 
Without the atonement, the guilt of Adam having been 
actual, personal, and sole, the penalty and the execu- 
tion would have been actual, personal, and sole. The 
sin and the gnilt of his posterity in that case being im- 
putative and in him, would have received an imputative 
punishment in him. The individual man is now born, 
overlaid by the atonement underlying the malediction. 
As a free agent, such are his liabilities and propensities 
to sin that he is held presumptively and imputatively a 
sinner, and therefore an imputative and presumptive 
malediction is over him; but that malediction cannot 
be actualized into penalty without actual sin. Tem- 
poral death, the consequence of Adam's sin, as a puta- 
tive penalty is justified by a putative guilt; as a natural 
effect, on the grounds, above stated, of compensation. 
Thus, so far from penalty falling upon the guiltless, the 
guilt and the penalty are adjusted with an absolute 
perfectness worthy of a divine government. 



94 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



The above elucidation will show the imaginary char- 
acter of certain contradictions which this writer imputes 
to leading Arminian writers. The proposition of Dr. 
Fisk, "that through the grace of the Gospel all are 
born free from condemnation," and the proposition of 
Watson that "all are born under the whole maledic- 
tion," are set by him at pretended issue. But Dr. Fisk 
is speaking of actual and personal condemnation, while 
the "malediction" specified by Watson is imputative 
or actual according to the nature of the case. In the 
case of the individual born, the malediction being im- 
putative is perfectly consistent with the freedom from 
the condemnation specified by Dr. Fisk, namely, per- 
sonal. Equally imaginary is the contradiction pre- 
tended between these statements and the proposition 
of Dr. Fi«k that " guilt is not imputed until, by a vol- 
untary rejection of the Gospel remedy, man makes the 
depravity of his nature the object of his choice." The 
writer cannot but know that Dr. Fisk here is not con- 
tradicting the doctrine that there is imputative guilt in 
a case of the individual born. What he is affirming is, 
that the personal and actual guilt of his deeds contrary 
to law is not imputed unto him until in the possession 
of gracious free agency he has incurred the penalty. 
This is perfectly consistent with the doctrine of Wat- 
son, as before explained, that we are " born under the 
whole malediction." 

Third Objection. If to punish men destitute of free 
moral agency is unjust, then God has threatened a pen- 
alty which he never intended to execute. 

The writer says: 

"How do they reconcile this including of Adam's 
offspring under the curse with ' the justness and good- 
ness ' of God ? Why, says Adam Clarke, ' God pro- 
vided a Redeemer.' And but for this provision ' it 



Arminian View of Fall and Redemption. 95 



would have been unjust to permit them to propagate 
their like in such circumstances that their offspring 
must be unavoidably and eternally wretched.' But 
this is the same as to say that the all-knowing, most 
wise, and true God made a threatening, which both his 
justice and goodness forbid him to execute! And, 
of course, it follows that he never intended to exe- 
cute it! " 

The writer has truly remarked that Arminian authors 
maintain that " the original threatening { in the day thou 
eatest thereof thou shcdt surely die] included both Adam 
and his posterity." But he omits to add, at this suit- 
able point, that Armiuians also hold that its literal and 
primary execution, even upon his posterity, would have 
been seminal and upon the person of Adam himself. 
Literally, the threatening is addressed to Adam alone. 
It was expressed, as before said, in the second person 
singular, and would have been fully filled out by its 
execution upon his person. The production of posterity 
was a contingency optional with the Creator; and the 
fulfillment of the words in their most literal sense 
would have excluded that contingency from realization. 
God, therefore, threatened precisely as he intended to 
execute. The threatening rested upon the progenitor, 
and upon the progenitor would have been the primary 
execution. It can never be shown that God ever in- 
tended, that a posterity should be brought into exist- 
ence under an eternal death they could never avoid. 
This God never threatened. What God intended to 
execute he did threaten positively: what he intended 
not to execute he did not threaten. The introduction 
of a Saviour competent to condition and limit the ap- 
plication of the law enabled the Creator, in full har- 
mony with the original law, to make the final execution 
dependent upon personal responsibility and guilt. Thus 



96 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



does Arminianism triumphantly sustain the veracity of 
God in the execution of his threatenings. 

II. Objections which deny the graciousness of bestow- 
ing a free agency through the Redeemer upon fallen 
man. 

First Objection. If free agency is necessary in order 
to the agent's performance of the divine requirements 
God is bound to furnish it, and it is, then, not a 
grace. 

This is the staple argument of both Calvinisms, in- 
herited from Edwards, who used it against Dr. Steb- 
bings (in his work on the Will), and reproduced by Dr. 
Taylor, of New Haven, Professor Finney, and others, 
with as much self-satisfaction as if it had not again and 
again been refuted.* "Why," says Edwards (p. 227), 
"is that called grace that is an absolute debt; which 
God is bound to bestow, and which it would be unjust 
and evil in him to withhold, seeing he requires that as 
the condition of pardon which he cannot perform w ith- 
out it ? " The absurdity of this reasoning is exposed by 
all our experience in life. 

Every endowment that man receives by nature or by 
redemption from God is a grace, and yet is the basis of 
a duty and a responsibility. Existence, life, what is it 
but the free gift of God, unbought, unasked, and un- 
deserved ? Who does not return daily thanks for this 
fundamental blessing? Yet is not life to be conse- 
crated to God ? And who will say, God requires our 
life to be devoted to him; he is, therefore, bound, in 
justice, to give us life; it is, therefore, debt and no 
grace ? All our faculties are to be employed in the serv- 
ice of the Giver; then he is bound to furnish those 

* For refutations see Dr. Fisk's Calvinistic Controversy, chap, xii, 
and Dr. Francis Hodgson's acute treatise entitled, New Divinity Ex- 
amined, chap. iv. 



Arminian View of Fall and Redemption. 97 



faculties, and they are a debt and no grace. No 
thanks are due for their bestowment. 

Passing to the sphere of redemption, if God requires 
us to obey the Mediator, he is obliged to give us the 
Mediator ; if he requires us to repose faith in his atone- 
ment, he is bound to furnish the atonement; if he re- 
quires us to follow the dictates of the Holy Spirit, he 
is bound to send the Holy Spirit. Hence all these are 
debt and no grace. God is bound to furnish these 
things as matter of justice, and so no thanks are due 
him for any special benevolence. The blended insanity 
and blasphemy of such reasoning secure its repudiation 
by every Christian heart. But how does it differ from 
the reasoning of Edwards ? 

What grace does man receive on earth which is not 
the basis of a duty? How does the divine require- 
ment of the duty destroy the grace ? God gives the 
blessing and requires its use. He gives the talent and 
requires the improvement. Our free agency, whether 
by nature or by redemptive restoration, is a grace, 
nor does the requirement of its proper use destroy 
its graciousness. His judgment is "gone backward" 
who says, If God requires the duty he destroys the 
grace. 

Nay, the very permission to perform the duty may 
be itself a privilege and a grace — a grace upon grace. 
The allowance of improvement upon the ten talents 
procured the dominion over ten cities. . The allowance 
of such a service, looking to such a result, was a munif- 
icent grace. Yet the service was a requirement if the 
talents were given. But, say these reasoners, if the 
service was required, the lord was bound to give the 
talents. They were a debt, a justice, and no grace. 
This moneyed ability so conferred to perform the serv- 
ice, it would be, forsooth, as Dr. Taylor is pleased to 



98 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



say, " a solecism to call a gracious ability." A priDce, 
we will suppose, takes a poor talented orphan boy into 
his commercial service, in a department by which the 
boy could become a millionaire. He furnishes mean- 
time to the boy the necessary capital for commencing 
the business; would there be no grace in the gift of 
that capital because the service could not be required 
without its bestowment ? Would there be any <£ sole- 
cism " in calling his conferred ability to serve his 
prince " a gracious ability ? " 

We would respectfully counsel our Calvinistic friends 
to forbear the repetition of this stale argumentation; an 
argumentation which expels all divine benevolence 
from nature, all grace from redemption. 

This writer, under this head, attempts to show, from 
the irresponsibility of sinners without the atonement, 
that no atonement was made for them. " Independ- 
ently of the death of Christ and the grace of the Gos- 
pel, we could never have been chargeable with sin; 
and of course Christ did not atone for the sins of 
any of the fallen race except Adam." And again: 
" How can our blessed Lord be said to have made a 
perfect satisfaction for all the sins of those who, but 
for his satisfaction, would have had no sins?" But 
how does it appear that in view of an atonement 
for sin a whole renovated and gracious system might 
not be established by God, including both an antece- 
dent ability and responsibility for sin, and also a full 
conditional satisfaction for all sin ? The former of these 
two might be established by the Creator and Judge, in 
view of, though not as direct effect of, the atonement; 
the latter would, in strictness, comprise the whole real 
work of the atonement. In other words, the atone- 
ment, Christ's death, is simply a conditional expiation 
of sin ; in view of that expiation God allows the con- 



Arminian View of Fall and Redemption. 99 



tinuity of the race, and restores the Holy Spirit, and 
holds man responsible, yet eligible to salvation upon 
faith in the conditional atonement. Thus a beautiful 
consistency pervades the whole process. 

Second Objection. If the atonement restores to man 
a responsible free agency, it is the greatest of all pos- 
sible curses, since without it man is irresponsible and 
innocent; but by it man becomes guilty, liable, and, to 
a great extent, consigned to eternal death. Instead, 
therefore, of being a grace, the atonement is a curse. 

Reasoning like this, we reply, assails Arminianism 
by assailing the foundations of Christianity. It as- 
sumes, as its basis, that a moral free agency is a curse. 
If it come through the atonement it is a curse; and if 
it come through creation or nature it must be equally 
a curse. And thus the creation of man as a responsible 
free agent, that is, the creation of man as man, the 
creation of man with what Christianity considers to be 
liis highest attributes, is a curse! What all admit, 
therefore, to be the very basis in man of a moral gov- 
ernment is a curse. What can infidelity ask more to 
sustain its position ? 

Grace is the goodness of God manifesting itself 
through redemption; benevolence is that same good- 
ness manifesting itself through nature. If to confer a 
moral free agency through the redemption is no grace, 
then to confer that same moral free agency through 
nature is no benevolence. But we shall have no hesi- 
tation in assuming that every Christian thinker will 
maintain that the natural bestowment of moral free 
agency is a benevolence in the Creator. And those 
same thinkers must maintain that the restoration of 
that moral free agency through the redemption is a 
grace. 

Through the whole Christian system the graciousness 



100 Essays, Reviews, and Discoueses. 



of God's gifts is to be estimated, not by the result pro- 
cured through the abuse of them on the part of the 
agent, but by the benevolence of the divine purpose in 
conferring the gift. "If I had not come," said the 
Saviour, "they had not had sin." John xv, 22. 
Surely it must be an infidel reasoner who infers that 
the coming of Jesus was, therefore, the greatest of 
curses. The Gospel is pronounced to be " a savor of 
death unto death." All the gifts and graces that God 
bestows are liable, by man's free perversion, to be 
transformed into curses. The reasoner who estimates 
the character of those graces and gifts, not by God's 
intention, but by man's perversion, will destroy all 
grace in redemption and all benevolence in creation. 
It follows, therefore, that the restoration of a moral 
free agency, being estimated by the gracious designs 
of God, is a most gracious bestowment resulting from 
the atonement. 

Third Objection. If God's benevolence in allowing 
the sufferings of creation cannot be defended without 
adducing the remedy through redemption, then re- 
demption must be a debt and not a grace, since God is 
obligated to furnish the redemption as a compensation 
for the miseries of creation. 

Thus this writer says: 

"'The state of all mankind,' says Mr. Wesley, c did 
so far depend on Adam, that by his fall they all fall 
into sorrow, and pain, and death spiritual and temporal. 
And all this is no ways inconsistent with either the 
justice or goodness of God.' This is sound Calvinism; 
but he immediately adds a proviso: All this is per- 
fectly consistent 4 with the justice and goodness of 
God:' Provided, all may recover through the second 
Adam whatever they lost through the first.' But if 
this be so, then it is the coming of the second Adam, 



Aeminian View of Fall and Redemption. 101 



'and the grace of the Gospel,' which alone vindicates 
' the justice and goodness of God ' in the fall of Adam's 
posterity 'into sorrow, and pain, and death.' But as 
God is supremely just and good, there could, of course, 
have been no such fall if there had been no 6 second 
Adam' — and no 'grace of the Gospel.' Thus the 
offspring of Adam are indebted to pure grace for this 
dreadful '/all into sorrow, pain, and death.' " 

To all this we reply: Of an entire system a single 
part may be, as viewed in different aspects, both a 
justice and a grace. It may be & justice because, if the 
other parts of the gracious system are brought into ex- 
istence, that part too must exist in order to the com- 
pleteness of the system. Unless that part be supplied 
the system is defective, perhaps graceless and even 
crud. But supply the part, and not only is the whole 
system gracious, but the part itself is pre-eminently 
gracious. The entire process of restoring Lazarus to 
life and to the enjoyment of his friends was a miracle 
of mercy. Christ was not bound to perform it. But 
to have granted him conscious life without the power 
of locomotion, fastening him forever, consciously alive, 
in the tomb, would have been the height of cruelty. 
Was the additional grant of locomotion, therefore, a 
debt? As a completion of the miracle of mercy, we 
answer, It was. The Saviour could not benevolently 
perform a part without performing the whole. But, 
performing the whole, not only was the whole process, 
but every part of the whole process, benevolence and 
grace. 

So in the system of God, were he to bring the race 
into existence under the law of natural descent from a 
depraved parent, and under the impending curse of the 
divine law, he would be obligated by his own right- 
eousness to furnish the redemptive part. The system, 



102 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



as a righteous system, would be incomplete, graceless, 
and cruel without the complement of the atonement. 
Furnish that part, and not only is the whole gracious, 
but that particular part is pre-eminently gracious! 
God was not obligated to create; and his act of creation 
was a manifestation of his benevolence as well as of bis 
power. Having created, it is due to his own character 
that his works should unfold that benevolence. Wher- 
ever he revealed himself as terrible and just, that 
revelation has some counterpart of manifested good- 
ness. This may be done either by rich displays in 
other parts of nature, explaining his dealings of severity, 
or in some new remedial system overlaying nature with 
an extraordinary display of grace. God has done it 
by the redemptive remedy. But the man who argues 
that, inasmuch as that remedy is the key to God's 
whole work, without which it would not be a merciful 
system, therefore it is no grace or goodness at all, will 
find himself involved in consequences which will ex- 
clude him from Christian theology and place him in 
the ranks of atheism. 

If, argues this writer, Wesley is obliged to adduce 
the redemption to justify God in the miseries of the 
world, he confesses that a redemption is a debt and no 
grace; and it follows that, but for that redemption, 
these miseries would not exist, and so to redemption 
we are indebted for all our woe. If, argues the atheist, 
the theist justifies the miseries in the world by the 
natural surplus of happiness in the world, then that 
happiness is a debt and no benevolence, and to it we 
are indebted for all these miseries. Thus the same 
reasoning that abolishes grace from redemption abol- 
ishes benevolence from nature. The reply is the same 
in both cases. God was not obliged to bring the 
system into existence; but having brought it forth, it 



Abminian View op Fall and Redemption. 103 



justifies the ways of his severity and the dark points of 
his providence, to show that there is a benevolence in 
nature, a grace in redemption. God could not appear 
just without these last elements, but the elements that 
show him just are truly benevolence and grace. Should 
God create this system without redemption, it would 
be a dark and gloomy system; give us the redemption, 
and not only is the whole system gracious, but the re- 
demptive part is eminently gracious. 



SAINT PAUL'S CLOSING P^AN. 

The first eight chapters of Romans embrace Paul's 
great argument of the epic of redemption. It traces 
human ruin and human salvation until, at chapter viii, 30, 
the whole scheme, crowned with glorification, stands 
like a grand structure, and the apo-tle commences a 
paean with, " What shall we say to these things ? " 

The semi-poetical character of this paean is evident 
from its phenomena of number. There are three inter- 
rogatories or' admiration, verses 31, 32 ; three challenges 
to the foes of the redeemed to accuse, to condemn, or to 
separate, verse 35 ; seven earthly foes are challenged by 
name, verse 35 ; and ten transcendental potencies are 
defied as unable to sever the believer from Christ, 
verses 38, 39. 

In regard to the sacred numbers, three and seven, the 
reader may consult the supplementary note in our com- 
mentary to Luke vi, 13. The number ten we shall soon 
discuss. 

Our present purpose is to call attention to the two 
catalogues of potencies, namely, the seven terrene and 
the ten transcendent, which are challenged and defied 



104 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 

successfully to assail the Christian persistently adher- 
ing to Christ. This sevenfold list is furnished in con- 
firmation of the third challenge, Who shall accuse f 
Who condemneth? Who shall separate? He finally 
calls the roll and challenges the seven, one by one — 
" tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, 
peril, sword." 

As seven is rather a gracious than a hostile number, 
we should hardly expect the Christian's foes to be sym- 
bolized under it. But it is from the victories over them 
that the apostle assigns this favorable number ; count- 
ing out seven martyr triumphs. The foes are none of 
them living beings, but all abstractions, yet implying a 
fierce human authorship behind them. They are all 
terrible ; none of them seductive or tempting enemies. 
They are the terrors and trials of which the apostle's 
own personal history was full, and which rose, doubt- 
less, in their awful shapes, to his memory as he wrote. 
How sublime the sense of divine strength and triumph 
in his own soul as he consciously felt their impotence to 
break the tie between him and his crucified Lord ! 
There seems something almost prophetic, however, in 
the fact that the catalogue closed in this enumeration, 
as it did in the apostle's history, with the sword! 
Without the gates of the very Rome to which he was 
now writing the executioner's sioorcl was in a few brief 
years to close the catalogue of his sufferings and tri- 
umphs. The foes were strong, but his love to Christ 
was still stronger. Wisely did the wise king say (Sol. 
Song, viii, 6, 1), "Love is strong as death. Many wa- 
ters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown 
it." 

A curious parallel to this enumerative seven is the in- 
ventory of Abraham's wealth in Gen. xii, 16 : "Sheep 
and oxen, and he-asses and men-servants, and maid- 



Saint Paul's Closing Pjean. 105 

servants and she-asses and camels." Here, in allusion, 
doubtless, to its fulfilling the covenant blessing upon 
him, the number is seven, elaborately wrought out by 
counting males and females, paralleling sexually he- 
asses and men-servants against maid-servants and she- 
asses, but keeping the seven by making no sexual divis- 
ion of the camels. 

The ten potencies, in verses 38, 39, far transcend the 
seven, rising grandly above the earthly and the human, 
and spreading out upon the wide universe. Elements 
of the most widely different nature are selected, a tinge 
of personification pervading them all. So vast and 
shadowy, indeed, so unique and unparalleled with other 
passages, are the idealities with which Paul's conception 
here surrounds him that few commentators have seemed 
quite able to rise into a full comprehension of their im- 
port. Nor does the apostle select them as possessing 
essentially a malignant, hostile, or infernal nature ; but 
as endowed with unmeasured power, if they were called 
to exert it hostilely. Just so, in Gal. i, 8, he selects an 
angel from heaven as the hypothetical announcer of a 
rival gospel. He sends his voice of challenge through 
the vastitudes of the universe, defying their power to 
break the love between Christ and his redeemed. 

As Fletcher of Madeley somewhere beautifully says, 
Not all the powers of hell can separate the Christian 
from his Saviour ; not all the powers of heaven will do 
it • none can or will, unless the man himself. 

Erasmus says there is nothing in Cicero superior in 
eloquence to this passage of the apostle. But there is 
nothing in Cicero so in the same style as to be suitably 
brought into comparison. The passage is rather poetic 
than oratorical ; rising into regions into which secular 
oratory at least, like Cicero's, rarely ascends. Horace, 
though a pagan poet, gives a picture of the firmly just 



106 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



man, which, though immensely inferior to this grand 
passage, is not unworthy to be brought into comparison. 

Justum ac tenacem propositi virum, 
Non civium ardor prava jubentium, 
Non vultus iustantis tyranni 
Mente quatit solida ; neque Auster 

Dux iuquieti turbidus Hadriae 

Nec fulminantis magna manus Jovis: 

Si fractus illabatur orbis 

Iinpavidura ferient ruinse. 

The man, just and firm of purpose, 

No popular excitement enjoining crime, 

No face of menacing tyrant 

Shakes from his steady mind ; nor south-blast 

Stormy lord of the restless Hadrian sea 
Nor the great hand of fulminating Jove : 

Should the shattered firmament fall 

Its ruins would strike him fearless. 

Were we to apply predestinarian exegesis to the 
words of Horace, we should hold him as denying that 
a just man ever ceases to be just, and so make the Epi- 
curean poet a good Calvinist. 

The number ten appears to symbolize the mundane 
or universal, usually in its secular or profane aspects ; 
and that in distinction often, but not always, from the 
sacred, especially from the elect of God. The ten horns 
of Daniel and John are the ten worldly kingdoms. The 
ten plagues of Egypt, the type of the world power, were 
a judicial penalty upon the profane. The ten command- 
ments are judicial and mundane. The first ten pedi- 
grees of Genesis, as being a thread of mundane history, 
embrace each just ten generations. Ten multiplied into 
seven gives us the seventy mundane nations. (See our 
Commentary on Luke x, 1-16.) The apostle marshals 



Saint Paul's Closing P^ean. 



107 



his ten potencies in four couplets (each couplet linked 
by an and) and two units. Thereby the ten is divided 
into two fives ; each five contains two couplets, followed 
and closed by one unit. 

Death and Life, Angels and Principalities, 
Powers, 

Presents and Futures, Heights and Depths, 
Creature. 

It was from want of knowing this remarkably exact 
numeration and parallelism that Alford, in his note on 
the wovdi powers, say>, "Some confusion, evidently, has 
crept into the arrangement. 1 ' 

The first couplet embraces the two potencies of exist- 
ence ; the second of living spiritual agencies; and the 
unit the potency of force. The third couplet presents 
the potencies of time, the fourth of space, and the last 
unit, of general finitude. Upon which we offer the fol- 
lowing notes : 

Verse 38. Neither death nor life — The two potencies 
of existence, namely, the two stage* of human existence, 
life and death. These are both mighty powers over hu- 
man destiny. Personified life is armed with terrible 
dangers, and death is the very king of terrors. Nor an- 
gels nor principalities— -Two potencies of living agents 
in the supersensible spiritual world. Angels through- 
out Scripture are the messengers of God, armed often 
^ with divine authorities. Principalities are the ranks 
and orders of beings in the background, never appear- 
ing to human view, and but dimly presupposed and 
rarely alluded to in Scripture. The Jews assigned vari- 
ous ranks to the beings of the invisible world ; and they 
were doubtless correct in assuming the existence of 
ranks and orders, though we have no reason to imagine 



108 Essays, Reviews, and Discoukses. 



that their description of those orders was accurate, or 
drawn from any revelation. So Paul, in Col. i, 16, 
speaks very indefinitely of thrones, dominions, princi- 
palities, powers / and in Eph. i, 21, principality, power, 
might, dominion, and every thing named in this world 
and that to come. All of which intimates that the New 
Testament, by a glimpse into the spiritual world, au- 
thorizes the belief of a great variety* of classifications 
without giving us any distinct description of their nat- 
ure. They come but very slightly within the range of 
the redemptive scheme, and so scarce within the limits 
of the purpose of Scripture revelation. Nor powers — 
Perhaps including the grand physical forces of univers- 
al nature known to science, especially to astroiiom} T , in 
the abstract, but sometimes personified in Scripture as 
living agencies, and even identified with angels. From 
the Greek word dvvdjieic comes our dynamics, dynam- 
ical. And then we have a sublime conclusion. Not all 
the forces that move the astronomic worlds could sepa- 
rate the redeemed from Christ. This is a thought 
which was not fully taken in by the apostle's mind, 
yet his words seem pregnant with it, and legitimately 
express it to us. This unit, poioers, after the two coup- 
lets, finishes the first five of the ten, as the other unit, 
creature, finishes the second five. Nor things present, 
nor things to come — Two potencies of time, embracing 
the vicissitudes of the present and the unknown revolu- 
tions of the future. 

Verse X9. Nor height, nor depth — Two antithetic po- 
tencies of space. The interpretation of height and 
depth as equivalent to heaven and hell is altogether in- 
commensurate with the npostle's conception. He des- 
ignates the opposite extremes of immensity. Height 
indicates the sublimity of loftiness or grandeur ; depth 
the sublimity of darkness, obscurity, and terror. Both 



Salxt Paul's Closing P^ean. 109 



personified suggest limitless power for unknown destruc- 
tion. Any other creature — Any other nature or being, 
save God and the man himself. Only these two (nei- 
ther of whom is named in the list) can work the terri- 
ble separation ; the former never will ; the dread alter- 
native rests solely with the latter. 



DOCTRINES OF METHODISM.* 

It is our purpose in the present article to furnish a 
brief statement of the doctrines of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, especially those points in which there ex- 
ists an issue with Calvinism. As a receiver of those 
doctrines, it will, of course, be expected, and probably 
desired, that the writer should present them favorably, 
and as they are viewed by their advocates. Occasional 
argumentative issues may be stated, in order that the 
points of collision may be more easily understood ; but 
it forms no part of our province to prove the doctrines 
presented. It is believed that such a statement, at the 
present time, may tend to remove misunderstanding, 
and serve the cause of Christian unity. 

In regard to the issue, it may be generally remarked 
that in those points which more immediately concern 
the divine government Calvinism affirms more than 
Arminianism, and that more the latter declines to ac- 
cept. Both sides, for instance, affirm foreknowledge, 
free-will, and the necessity of divine grace to salvation; 
Calvinism superadds to these respectively, foreordina- 
tion, necessity, and irresistibleness, to which Arminianism 
declines assent. On points less central, as final apos- 
tasy, entire sanctification, and witness of the Spirit, our 
Arminianism affirms, and Calvinism rejects. 

* " Bibliotheca Sacra," April, 1862. 



110 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



FUNDAMENTAL MAXIM OF DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 

The fundamental maxim upon which the issue above 
named is primarily grounded, and from which, if we 
mistake not, most of the other issues logically result, 
is the Edwardean maxim, that it is no matter how we 
come by our evil volitions, dispositions, oV nature, in 
order to responsibility, provided we really possess them. 
Or we may state the maxim thus : God judges us as he 
finds us to be, good or evil, and holds us responsible 
without regard to the means by which we became so. 
We do not say that all who are considered Calvinists 
hold this maxim. But upon the acceptance or rejec- 
tion of this proposition it logically depends, as it ap- 
pears to us, whether the man should be a Calvinist or 
Arminian. From our rejection of this maxim it is that 
we differ from some or all the classes of Calvinists on 
the subject of free-ioill, divine sovereignty, predestina- 
tion, election . primary responsibility for inborn depravity, 
partial atonement, and final perseverance. To this max- 
im, that it is no matter hoto we come by volitional state 
in order to its being responsible, we oppose the counter 
maxim that in order to responsibility for a given act or 
state, power in the agent for a contrary act or state is 
requisite. In other words : "no man is to blame for 
lohat he cannot help? Power underlies responsibility. 
Non-existence of power is non-existence of responsibil- 
ity. The only limitation of this principle is the maxim 
that self -superinduced inability does not exclude responsi- 
bility. The agent who abdicates his powers we hold to 
be responsible for his impotence, and for all the non- 
performances which legitimately result. Our entire 
axiom, then, is : all inability to an act or state, not self- 
superinduced, excludes responsibility. The man who 
maintains, counter to this our position, the above-speci- 



Doctrines of Methodism. Ill 



fied Edwardean maxim must, we think, if a logical rea- 
soner, support all the Calvinistic views above enumer- 
ated. The man who adopts our maxim is as logically 
bound to reject them. 

FREE-WILL. 

When a man transgresses a divine requirement by a 
wrong volition, the question arises: Could he have willed 
otherwise f He is held by the law penally responsible 
for the act. If, now, the maxim be true that God re- 
gards not the way in which he became possessed of the 
volition, then no power to the contrary is required. 
God may create him without power for other volition ; 
may create him in fixed and necessitated possession of 
the volition, yet may still hold him responsible, and con- 
sign him to endless penalty. If, on the other hand, ad- 
equate power for a contrary volition must underlie 
obligation for a contrary volition, and so lor responsi- 
bility for the actual volition, then there must have ex- 
isted in the given agent power for a volition contrary 
to the volition actually put forth. 

Methodism has, in accordance with this view, from 
the beginning maintained this doctrine of free-will. 
We have ever maintained that it imputes injustice to 
God to suppose that he holds us responsible for a neces- 
sitated act or condition ; or that he ever requires an 
act or condition for which he does not furnish the ade- 
quate power. It is the apparent making of this impu- 
tation in the various doctrines of Calvinism with which 
Methodism has taken issue. 

Our view of free-will is tolerably well expressed by 
the formula: " the power of contrary choice." It would, 
perhaps, be more accurately expressed by the formula 
furnished and condemned by Edwards (p. 419, Andover 
Edition, 1840) : " The power of choosing differently in 



112 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



given cases." The question proposed by Fletcher to 
Toplady was : " Is the will at liberty to choose otherwise 
than it does, or is it not f " The man who affirms the 
first member of this question is bound to be an Armin- 
ian ; the affirmant of the latter member must, as we 
suppose, logically be a Calvinist. Hence w T e do not 
hold either of the four following positions : 

1. The doctrine of volitional necessity [ordinarily 
culled philosophical necessity), as it is ably maintained 
by Edwards. This doctrine, as we understand it, sup- 
poses that every choice is determined to be as it is by 
some one antecedent strongest motive. Pre-existent 
causes-fix and limit the volition, excluding all adequate 
power for a different volition instead. Every transgres- 
sion, therefore, as to us it appears, is volitionally com- 
mitted without adequate power for a volitional avoid- 
ance. Sin is always a thing which cannot be helped by 
the sinner. 

2. The distinction of moral and natural inability, as a 
solution of the problem of responsibility. This natural 
ability, as we understand it, is the power to do as we 
will, which has no relation to the question of volitional 
freedom ; or it is the power to will as we will, that is, 
to will as we do will, and no other way. That is, the 
will is supposed to have the power to act solely and 
merely as it does act, and no otherwise ; which is a 
power possessed by every machine and every physical 
cause. By our axiom above, this view appears to us to 
be necessity, and it excludes the possibility of responsi- 
bility. 

3. The law of uniform action of the will. We un- 
derstand some who affirm the doctrine of the power of 
contrary choice also to affirm that, nevertheless, there 
is in all instances a one certain highest or strongest mo- 
tive, in accordance with which, though possessed of di- 



Doctrines of Methodism. 113 



verse power, the will does certainly act. This substi- 
tutes for the law of causation the law of uniformity. 
Both laws we should view as equally universal and 
equally apodictical. But it is the law of uniformity in 
causation which renders the causative limitation of will 
to a sole possible volition subversive of responsibility. 
It appears logically as impossible for an act to take 
place contradictorily to the law of uniformity as to the 
law of causation ; and responsibility in both cases seems 
equally excluded. 

4. The antecedent securement of the certainty of the 
sole volition. Some who deny necessity affirm the pre- 
viously secured certainty of the volition. By the cer- 
tainty of an event we mean its simple futurition. It is 
a simple will-be, perfectly pure from the must-be. Now 
there are those, as we understand, who affirm that ante- 
cedent causation does not secure the necessity, but does 
" secure the certainty " of the future volition. They 
thus seek to evade the difficulties of necessity. But be 
it noted that to secure a thing has both a positive and a 
negative side. To secure a thing absolutely and per- 
fectly is to exclude the possibility of a different thing 
instead. To secure the certainty of a given volition, 
therefore, is to exclude the possibility of a different cer- 
tainty. To secure the futurition of a given volition is 
to exclude the possibility of tlie futurition of a differ- 
ent volition ; which is necessity, and, therefore, appears 
exclusive of responsibility. 

Our views of responsibility require us, therefore, to 
affirm fully and unequivocally the doctrine of the free- 
dom of the will. With the limitation which we have 
already indicated in our axiom, every obligatory and 
every responsible volitional act is a free act ; that is, 
put forth with the adequate power of putting forth a 
different act instead. Thus far we have rejected the 
8 



114 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



limitations to this power arising from necessity, uni- 
formity, or secured certainty. 

DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 

We hold it to be a doctrine both of natural and re- 
vealed religion that God is an omnipotent being, pos- 
sessed of power for all operations which involve not a 
contradiction. But any act the expression of which in- 
volves a contradiction we consider to be no act at all ; 
so that this exception is not a limitation of divine 
power, but only a definition of the true idea of omnipo- 
tence. God is sovereign over the realm of nature and 
of free agents ; yet in both cases he limits his uniform 
action by self-circumscribing laws. The laws of nature 
are the uniform rules of God's action, imposed by him- 
self upon himself. And these self-imposed laws are 
necessary to the very existence of the kingdom of nat- 
ure ; and they do, in fact, give God his position as sov- 
ereign of nature, and therein are necessary to his divine 
sovereignty. In the realm of free agency, also, God 
finds, as we think, his highest exaltation as sovereign, 
by so circumscribing his own modes of action as to leave 
unviolated the full exercise of the freedom of the agent, 
so far forth as he is a free and responsible agent. For 
God to secure absolutely and limitatively the one possi- 
ble volition of the agent, and yet leave him a free agent ? 
is, in our view, a contradiction ; as genuine a contradic- 
tion as for God to cause a heavier body to ascend, and 
yet preserve the law of gravitation. The requirement 
that God's sovereignty must jealously cause and secure, 
as well as limit, every act of the agent in our estima- 
tion reduces God from his position as a sovereign to 
the predicament of a mechanist. He is no longer king 
of free beings, but a mover of automatons. The high- 
est glory of God as a divine sovereign consists, as we 

* 



Doctrines of Methodism. 



115 



conceive, in his giving the fullest permission for the 
freest range of responsible agency, though it sweep the 
scope of half the universe ; and yet so taking the wise 
in their own craftiness, and over-mastering the mighty 
in their might, as to accomplish all his own grand de- 
signs, and produce the best and most glorious possible 
of ultimate results. 

DIVINE PRESCIENCE AND PREDETERMINATIONS. 

God we hold to be not only omnipotent but omnis- 
cient ; and of this omniscience foreknowledge is a par- 
ticular phase. We hold that God knows or foreknows 
all contingencies, possibilities, and real events in the 
future. God's predeterminations are acts ; and inas- 
much as God, with all his attributes, must precede his 
actions, just as all cause must precede its effect, so God's 
foreknowledge must precede his predeterminations. Yet 
as both these — his foreknowledge and his predetermina- 
tions — are viewed as in some sense eternal, so the pri- 
ority of knowledge to act must be, perhaps, viewed as 
a priority in nature, rather than in time. Sir William 
Hamilton's doctrine of the unknowableness of the infi- 
nite must here, perhaps, be so far accepted as to incline 
us to acknowledge that we discern truth, not as it is in 
itself, but truth as it appears to us. Be it a contradic- 
tion or not, the eternal cause must, to our conception, 
in the order of nature precede the eternal effect ; that 
is, God as foreknowing must be viewed as preceding 
God as predetermining. All the acts of God, even his 
predeterminations, we view as perfectly free ; just as 
truly free as the freest actions of any agent in the uni- 
verse. And, holding that the knowledge of free action 
does not impede their freedom, so we hold that God's 
foreknowledge of his own free actions, including his 
own predeterminations, does not impede their freedom. 



116 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



The proposition that " God foreordains whatsoever 
conies to pass," taken in its natural and what we have sup- 
posed its historical meaning, and its full extent, we are 
compelled to reject, both from our antecedent views of 
human responsible freedom, and because, taken in that 
same proper sense and extent, it seems to us, in spite of 
every effort at avoidance, to amount to the proposition 
that God is the author of si a. To foreordain a thing or 
act seems to us to liea divine volition, causatively fixing 
and determining that thing or act, rendering it thereby 
fixed and necessary. To foreordain, also, has its posi- 
tive and negative side. It seems to fix positively that 
the act shall be thus and so, and to exclude negatively 
the possibility of its being otherwise than thus or so; 
and thus, limiting the act to one sole result, excludes 
liberty, and so responsibility, from existence. Again, 
to foreordain an act seems to us to be the same as in- 
tentionally to will that act ; and if the act be a sin, the 
most and the worst that we can say of the human sin- 
ner himself is, that he intentionally wills the sinful act ; 
and thereby we appear obliged to affirm of God that he 
is as truly the author of sin as the sinner. The differ- 
ence between the two appears to us to lie, not in the 
reality of the intentional volition, that is, the author- 
ship, but in the number of the intermediate media 
through which the causation is transmitted, which is a 
difference no way affecting the chargeableness of the 
authorship. 

Desirous to avoid these consequences, we would rather 
say that God's foreordinations, or rather predetermina- 
tions, are to be lim&ed to his own acts. Supposing that 
in the infinitely distant anterior period of ''timeless- 
ness " God is employed in selecting from all possible 
systems that which his wisdom best approves, the sys- 
tem which he is to be viewed as finally adopting is a 



Docteixes of Methodism:. 



117 



system consisting properly and directly of his own fut- 
ure actions. Knowing, indeed, by the absolute perfec- 
tion of his own attribute of omniscience all future pos- 
sibilities, including all possible results from any sup- 
posed arrangements, God does, in full foreknowledge 
of all results in the case, so plan all his own actions and 
courses as seems to him wisest and best. So far forth 
as sequently upon any act or course of God any free 
being will sin, for that sin the free being, being fully 
able to avoid it, and bringing it unnecessarily into ex- 
istence, is alone responsible. He alone has intruded it 
into existence. God neither predetermined, foreor- 
dained, willed, nor desired it. God's predeterminations 
of his oion future action, or courses of action, are to be 
considered as so far contingent as that their execution 
or coming into existence is conditioned upon the com- 
ing into existence of many presupposed free actions of 
finite agents, which are able not to be put forth. Yet, 
nevertheless, inasmuch as God's omniscience does truly 
and fully foresee the free volition which will actually 
be put forth, there is no proper danger that God will 
be deceived in the perfect wisdom of his plans, or be frus- 
trated in any of his actual purposes. 

Whether there are not many theologians at the pres- 
ent time who use the terms predestination and foreor- 
di nation, and hold themselves to believe in the doc- 
trines properly designated by those terms, who yet do 
so define these terms as to make their views nearly or 
quite coincide with the above statements, is more than 
the writer of this article is able to say. We trust 
that such is the fact ; and our objections then would be 
mainly verbal, lying against the propriety and clearness 
of the terms and the phraseology used. Let us hope 
that mutual explanation will be productive of increased 
agreement. 



118 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



FOREKNOWLEDGE. 

It might at first appear fair to say that the recon- 
ciliation of foreknowledge with free agency is the dif- 
ficulty of our theology. Yet there seems to be a great 
difference, of which a theology ought to avail itself, be- 
tween the admission of simple foreknowledge and the 
additional admission of predestination. If the term pre- 
destination has any proper significance, it implies a strict 
causative relation between the long past predestinating 
act and the predestined event. If it becomes any thing 
less than this, it becomes simply prereeognition, with 
non-prevention in view of some collateral good ; which 
is, properly speaking, foreknowledge. The true distinc- 
tion, in fact, between foreknowledge and predestination 
is, that the former simply cognizes the act which an- 
other cause will put forth, while the latter causatively 
determines its putting forth, purposely excluding, by 
necessitative limitation, any other act instead. God 
may be supposed to foresee the act because the agent 
will put it forth ; but God cannot properly be said to 
predestinate the action because the agent will put it 
forth ; on the other hand, the agent must perform the 
act because it is predestinated. The act of the agent 
cannot properly be free, because it is antecedently lim- 
ited and determined. 

Our views of the reconcilement of foreknowledge 
with free-agency may, in brief, be represented in the 
following paragraphs : 

1. The utmost doctrine of free-will does not require 
us to djny that there is some one way, and no other, in 
which all free volitions will be put forth. The infinite 
number of free volitions, singly and collectively, while 
put forth with full power otherwise, will be put forth 
in some one way, and no other. We have, then, only 



Doctrines of Methodism. 119 



to affirm that, somehow or other, we know not how, 
this one infinite series of volitions, put forth with full 
power otherwise, is perfectly foreknown by God. That 
is, the volitions are perfectly free, yet completely fore- 
known. 

2. From this it follows that it is perfectly just and 
true that an agent can do otherwise than the way that 
God knows he will do ; and yet it is not true that God 
can be deceived. The first is true ; for if the foreknown 
act be that one act put forth with full counter power, 
then, by the very supposition, there is full power to 
perform an act different from the one foreknown. The 
second is not true ; for, by the very supposition, the 
act which will be put forth, whichever that is, is the 
one perfectly and truly foreknown. God's foreknowl- 
edge, then, is sure of verification. 

3. Foreknowledge does not cause the free act to be 
unfree. In conception, we first posit the free act; 
namely, the act as free as if there were no foreknowl- 
edge, or as if there were no God. This conception is, 
in itself, perfectly possible. Then, for that intrinsically 
free act to be foreknown, does not cause it to be unfree, 
nor in any way affect its intrinsic nature. Foreknowl- 
edge is not the cause of the free act ; properly speaking, 
the particularity of the free act is the cause of the par- 
ticularity of the anterior knowledge. 

4. Nor does foreknowledge prove the act to be unfree. 
For, by the very supposition, the act put forth with di- 
verse power is the act foreknown. How the Deity 
came in possession of that power we are, indeed, neither 
able nor bound to say ; no more than we are bound to 
say how God came in possession of his self-existence. 

To the Edwardean argument, that the fixedness of the 
eternally past effect, namely, foreknowledge, proves the 
necessitative character of the cause, namely, the act, we 



120 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 

have our reply. That cause is, for instance, now tran- 
spiring — a free volition, put forth with free counter 
power. That act, as cause, reflects its effectuation into 
the anterior eternity, and into God's eternal foreknowl- 
edge, there reproducing, in idea, just its own actual nat- 
ure. The fixedness or immutability of that foreknowl- 
edge proves nothing ; for the very supposition is that 
God's knowledge has the right act in possession (name- 
ly, the act which will, in full possession of power for 
other act, be truly put forth), and no other. But if the 
right act be in the divine eternal anterior knowledge, 
what need of any change or mutability ? If it has the 
right act, that foreknowledge is bound to be fixed and 
unchanging in its rightness. But, as before shown, this 
makes no difference in the intrinsic nature of the act. 

DOCTRINE OF SIN AND GUILT. 

Sin is, according to John, anomia, or disconformity 
to the law ; and the term, therefore, though primarily 
applicable to actual transgression, is nevertheless used, 
both in theology and Scripture, to designate a moral 
state or condition of being. Should, however, a being be 
placed in such a state otherwise than by his own free act, 
with full power of acting otherwise, for such a state we 
hold that he could not be strictly responsible, or, with 
absolute justice, punishable. In such a being there 
would be evil, moral evil, sin, but not responsibility, or 
desert of penalty. Should such a state of being be 
brought about by the agent's own free act, the respon- 
sibility would, we think, exist in full force ; or, should 
the free being in such a state, possessed of full power 
to act otherwise, nevertheless sanction and appropriate 
to himself his depraved condition, making it the con- 
trolling power of his life, he thereby contracts the re- 
sponsibility. Such a depraved state, in our view T , has 



Doctrines of Methodism. 



121 



never been produced in any being by God, but always 
by free secondary agents. All responsible sin, there- 
fore, whether of action or condition, arises from the ac- 
tion of free finite beings, in disconformity to the law, 
and in abuse of their free agency. 

Sin, therefore, being produced, not by the infinite, 
but by the finite agent, can claim, in our view, no orig- 
inal ion, ratification, or sanction from God. He neither 
willed it, ordained it, determined it, ordered it, located 
it, nor approvingly permitted it. He chose, indeed, that 
system of his own actions into which he knew that oth- 
ers would obtrude sin. The free agency by which it is 
produced is itself, as a quality created by him, sublime- 
ly excellent ; and is so created on account of its supe- 
rior excellency and vast superiority over a system of 
inanimate beings or necessitated agents. But as a sys- 
tem of free agents would be superior to a system of 
necessitated agents, so the system of free agents who 
would freely choose to be perfectly holy would, we 
hold, doubtless be superior to a system of sinful free 
agents. Sin, therefore, actual and real, can be consid- 
ered as no benefit to the government of God. It is evil 
in nature and evil in effect. Nor does God need sin in 
order to the production of the highest and best results. 
Where the sin will, however, be freely committed, God 
does place sequences of particular . good, which would 
not take place but for that antecedent sin; although 
without the sin he might secure some still higher good. 
He often makes a particular good the sequent of a par- 
ticular sin, which, did not that sin exist, would be by 
him effectuated from some other antecedent. In the 
present system, also, a particular sin, as, for instance, 
the sin of Adam, may be the condition absolutely requi- 
site to the possibility of a particular highest good in 
the now existing system ; which highest good may be 



122 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



the most exalted theme of angelic anthems; yet all this 
does not preclude the fact that, were there no sin in 
the universe, a still more glorious, as well as a more 
happy, condition of things might exist. 

The act of the will, put forth with full power other- 
wise, in intentional disconformity to the law, is actual 
or actional sin. The resultant ethical quality of con- 
demnability, which our moral sense sees as inhering in 
the personality of the agent in consequence of the com- 
mission of such sin, we call guilt. And as the moral 
sense can see this guilt solely in the personality of the 
committing agent, it is impossible for this guilt to be 
transferred to another personality. Correlative to this 
guilt, the moral sense sees inhering in the person of the 
guilty a desert of just punishment. These correlations 
are fundamental and axiomatic. Punishment, there- 
fore, is no more transferable, literally, than guilt. Nei- 
ther is any more transferable than is a past act person- 
ally performed by one agent transferable to another 
agent. When, therefore, an innocent man is said to 
suffer in the stead of a guilty man, it is only in figura- 
tive conception that the guilt and punishment of the 
guilty are attributed or imputed to the innocent man ; 
the literal fact is, that the innocent man is still inno- 
cent, and the endurance by the innocent is simply suf- 
fering, but not literally, to him, punishment. 

THE FALL AND DEPRAVATION OP MAN. 

In the primordial man, Adam, as in every primordial 
progenitor, a whole posterity is conceptually enfolded. 
As in the acorn is inclosed, not only the oak, but a 
whole descending lineage of oaks, so in our first parent 
was inclosed a whole system of diverging lineages em- 
bracing a race. As his primordial nature shall stand 
higher or lower, so shall the deduced nature of that race 



Doctrines of Methodism. 



123 



be higher or lower. Under this fundamental law, ex- 
tended through the whole generative system of crea- 
tion, and based upon reasons of the highest wisdom, 
man, with his fellow races, animal and vegetable, is placed 
on earth. That law, that self-limiting law, God cannot 
wisely change. Upon the first man he bestows a nature 
of transcendental excellence, yet with a free and plastic 
power of self-degradation by sin. As man stands or 
falls, he stands or falls in his typical character; and his 
whole race, under the universal lineal law, must bear 
the same physical, intellectual, and moral type. And 
with this natural law corresponds the theodicic arrange- 
ment. Under the same moral and judicial conditions in 
which man places himself, must, as we believe, his pos- 
terity, if born, be born. 

Historically, man, by sin, places himself under condi- 
tions of depravation, including the threefold death — cor- 
poreal, moral, eternal. 

The individual, Adam, is shut off from the tree of 
life ; and is thus, perhaps, left to a natural mortality, 
through the decay and disintegration of his physical 
system. His sin has excluded the Holy Spirit ; and 
thus the love of God can no longer be a motive of ac- 
tion, and the main source of spiritual light and knowl- 
edge is lost, and the vacillating will is so weakened 
that it no longer firmly holds to the. right. This state 
of things is not caused by the act of the infinite will, 
but is the result produced by the lawless action of the 
finite will. By his own free act, Adam has excluded 
from himself those conditions by which the love of God 
could be his motive of action, and, therefore, has ren- 
dered holy action an impossibility to himself. He is, 
indeed, perhaps, still in every respect intrinsically and 
organicajly a free agent. Yet, inasmuch as holy action 
is placed beyond his reach, he is no longer objectively 



124 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



free to holiness and right, and is unable to do that 
which is pleasing in the sight of God. He is, therefore, 
under sentence of temporal, moral, and eternal death. 

Under these conditions, shall he bring a posterity 
into existence ? He can bring them into existence, by 
the laws of nature, only with his own character, and, 
apparently, to his own destiny. For conceptionally, as 
above stated, his whole race is serninally existent in 
him. The sentence of condemnation is addressed to 
him individually, indeed, yet to him, containing his 
whole race within himself. Shall the individuals of 
that race, by the prosecution of the natural generative 
law, be brought by him into personal existence ? Man, 
then, by a second procedure, would consummate the 
terrible evil of his first procedure. He, under the fun- 
damental laws, in the prosecution of second causes, 
would plunge a race in endless misery, naturally result- 
ing from his unholy procedures. There are bat two 
methods, that we can conceive, of arresting man in his 
full course of evil-doing. By the first method the full 
force of the sentence may be executed and exhausted 
upon himself by the infliction of temporal, spiritual, and 
eternal death immediately interposed, previous to the 
production of offspring. God's veracity is thus sus- 
tained, and the evil of sin is manifested by the abortion 
of the race. By the second method, a redemptive sys- 
tem may be interposed, by which, on the continued 
basis of free agency and probation, man, the whole race, 
or that part of the race which attains the end of its 
probation, may be restored to even, perhaps, a higher 
glory than the Adamic race could have attained. 

That the sentence would have received its full literal 
execution in the person of Adam, precluding actual pos- 
terity, we infer from a contemplation of the supposable 
condition of the race as brought by Adam into natural 



DOCTEINES OF METHODISM. 



125 



existence in his own moral position : 1. The moral death 
includes in its idea the exclusion of any possible fulfill- 
ment of the moral law from the agent's reach. True, 
then, to our axiomatic foundation, we firmly deny that 
he could be justly responsible and liable to its penal- 
ties. Born under the law, the law has a right to meas- 
ure his moral character, and affirm his ano?nia, that is, 
his disconformity to the law, both in action and in moral 
condition ; but the moment the law attempts to inflict 
the penalty, the rightfulness of its own action is by itself 
condemned. Nor can this difficulty be removed, as we 
conceive, by any natural or moral ability supposable in 
the case. All natural ability is under control of the 
volitions ; the volitions are under control of the inclina- 
tions ; and those inclinations are controlled by necessi- 
tating causations. There is no imaginable ability, there- 
fore, which relieves the agent from an adamantine 
necessity, inclosing him as tightly within his moral evil 
as a fossil reptile is imbedded in the solid rock. The 
agent, therefore, as tried by the law, is evil — morally 
evil ; and as all anomia is sin, his nature and his actions 
are sinful ; and yet he is not responsible or justly liable 
to penalty. 2. Corporeal death, if it does not preclude 
birth, includes the idea of disease, decay, and mortality 
during a temporary life. As a mere nature, this may be 
justifiable under a law of compensation ; but, as a judi- 
cial penalty, we have before shown that the law has 
none it can inflict. 3. Eternal death would, of course, 
follow, from the very immortality of his nature, being 
an immortality of evil — moral death perpetuated. As 
a natural process, this cannot be justified ; for the evil 
is too great for compensation ; still less can it be justi- 
fied judicially, for still less has the law a penalty it can 
inflict. It is this state of condemnation by the law of a 
race and nature born under the law which requires the 



126 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



legal fiction of imputation to render penalty a namable 
thing. Conceptually alone, not literally or truly, can 
man, in this condition, be said to be guilty, and liable 
to the judicial penalty of death, temporal or eternal. 
It may, at first sight, seem strange, that the divine, like 
the human law, should deal in legal fiction. But it is 
no more strange than true. Pardon itself involves a 
legal fiction. Justification, by a legal fiction, supposes 
its subject to be innocent and free from the penalty, and 
treats him as such who is guilty and justly liable to the 
penalty. Justification and imputation are antithetic 
fictions : the former of mercy, the latter of severity ; 
the former, seeing innocence where there is guilt ; the 
latter, if not seeing guilt where there is innocence, cer- 
tainly seeing guilt where there is irresponsibility. That 
fiction, as a basis of penalty, if the race without the 
atonement were not merely hypothetical, would be a 
most serious matter, an irreparable injustice in the gov- 
ernment of God. Its true u>e is not fully understood 
until, subsequently to the redemption, it is introduced 
to illustrate, by its antithesis of imputed guilt, the prin- 
ciple of imputed innocence under the Redeemer. 

THE REDEMPTION. 

The introduction of the Redeemer, sequently upon 
the fall of man, was not a divine afterthought. By a 
divine predetermination, conditioned upon that foreseen 
apostasy, Christ was the Lamb slain from before the 
foundation of the world. In view of the compensa- 
tions by it afforded, expressions of deeper severity 
toward sin are made than otherwise would have taken 
place. A Redeemer is introduced who, by a death of 
infinitely more value than that of Adam and all his 
race, is entitled to take humanity into his guardianship, 
and measure out mercy and justice according to the 



Doctrines of Methodism. 



127 



laws of a wise probation : 1. In view of the future 
atonement, the natural continuity of the human race 
remains uninterrupted, and a basis is thus afforded for 
a new system. 2. In view of that same atonement, the 
Holy Spirit is restored, whereby motives in the direc- 
tion of spiritual realities may become grounds of action, 
and their proper improvement may lead to justification 
and regeneration. Man does not thereby receive any 
new faculty. He is not even organically made to be a 
free agent ; for he never ceased to be such ; only spirit- 
ual things, and the possibility of pleasing God, are 
again brought within the reach of his free agency. Nor 
is the Holy Spirit, nor any other influence, normally so 
brought to bear upon his free agency as to be irresisti- 
ble, or secured to be unresisted ; since that would be to 
overwhelm his free agency on the other side. To afford 
him such aids as render him able to accept salvation 
without Overcoming his ability to reject it, probation- 
arily leaving the decision to his own free-will, is the 
precise law by which the dealings of God with him are 
now governed. 3. Though, both in the matter of tem- 
poral and eternal death, man still remains under liability, 
so that, by rejection of the Redeemer, he may come 
under full execution of the primal sentence, yet by the 
proper exercise of his free-will, aided by the Spirit gra- 
ciously bestowed, in accepting and obeying the Re- 
deemer, he may finally attain a glory through Christ, 
greater, perhaps, than he lost through Adam. 

For a created inclination, necessitated in its charac- 
ter, bad though it be — morally bad, disconformed to 
the law — we are, as before intimated, utterly irrespon- 
sible. It may rightfully be called sin, for all anomia is 
sin; and the man is a sinner, but not a responsible sin- 
ner, since for any other than sin there is no power. 
This arises from our rejection of the maxim that the 



128 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



law takes no cognizance of the way in which we became 
possessed of our evil, and our affirmation of the axiom 
that power for the contrary must underlie all responsi- 
ble action. On the other hand, inclinations conformed 
to the law, created necessitatedly within us, without 
any power of modification in our will, are truly excel- 
lent, morally excellent, innocent, and in all these senses, 
perhaps, properly called holy ; yet they afford no moral 
desert. They are lovable, but not strictly rewardable. 
It is not, then, until there is redemptively conferred 
upon man what we call a gracious ability for the right, 
that man can strictly be responsible for the wrong. 
With this inauguration, therefore, upon the redemptive 
basis, responsibility and a true and just divine govern- 
ment become possible. Under the redemptive system, 
the man is born into the world, from Adam, a depraved 
being. It is as a depraved being that he becomes an 
Ego. But instantly after, in the order of nature, he is 
met by the provisions of the atonement. If he is not 
thereby immediately, unconditionally justified and re- 
generated, his death before the commission of actual 
sin would place him out of the category of condemna- 
tion. He is held guiltless until the moment of his re- 
sponsible agency arrives and personal sin has subjected 
him to the personal penalty of the law; and then the 
forfeiture of the justifying and regenerating influences 
of the atonement, so far forth as they may be admitted 
to exist, has brought him into complete responsibility 
for his Adamic depravity, which is now fully sanctioned, 
and appropriated into his own voluntary course of 
action. 

So far as we can see, these statements present the 
antithesis between our loss through Adam and our gain 
through Christ, in full accordance with its presentation 
by Paul in the fifth chapter of Romans. By the sin of 



Doctrines of Methodism. 



129 



the former, we incur death and judgment unto condem- 
nation, and are made sinners. By the righteousness 
of the latter, we receive life and justification, are made 
righteous, attaining a grace much more abundant than 
the previous sin. And inasmuch as we are made sinners 
antecedently to the atonement, without the power of 
being other than sinners, we can be held in that case as 
responsible sinners only by a conceptual imputation of 
sin. Under the atonement, that conceptual imputation 
is continued only as the logical antithesis to the con- 
ceptual imputation of righteousness to the guilty 
through the atoning righteousness of Christ. 

RIGHTEOUSNESS AND GRACE IN THE REDEMPTION. 

In regard to parts, if not the whole, of the provisions 
of the redemption, as thus stated, it will be said that 
they are but provisions of justice and not of grace. If 
powers were necessary in order to the fulfillment of re- 
quirements, God was bound, in righteousness, to grant 
them; and, in justice, could not withhold them; and 
tliey are therefore not gracious. Nevertheless, we hold 
that such provisions are none the less by grace because 
by righteousness. Benevolence is the goodness of God 
exhibited in nature ; grace is the goodness of God ex- 
hibited in redemption. And as God could not be justi- 
fied in the works of nature without appealing to the 
proofs of benevolence, it might be said that " God is 
bound to furnish that benevolence; and it is therefore 
no benevolence, but mere righteousness." Neverthe- 
less, it is none the less benevolence because necessary 
to justify God's righteousness. The righteousness and 
the grace are but different views of the same thing. 

Thus it may be said that, if God required the exer- 
cise of a moral ability, he was bound to grant such abil- 
ity; it is, therefore, properly not called a gracious 
9 



130 Essays, Reviews, and Disco ukses. 



ability. It might as truly be argued, that if God require 
us to obey the Mediator, he is obligated to furnish the 
Mediator. If he require faith in the atonement, he is 
bo and to furnish the atonement ; if he require us to fol- 
low the guidance of the Holy Spirit, he is bound to fur- 
nish the Holy Spirit; so that none of these gifts are 
gracious, and grace is excluded from the redemption. 
With equal truth it might be said that because God re- 
quires us to serve him with all our natural endowments, 
existence, life, faculties, and advantages, therefore none 
of these are by benevolence, but by debt. Hereby 
grace is banished from redemption, and benevolence 
from nature. Every endowment that man receives, by 
nature or redemption, even though it be the basis of a 
duty and a requirement, is none the less a gratuity. 
God gives the grace, and imposes the requirement, be- 
cause it is a grace ; nor does the requirement abolish 
the grace. 

NATURE AND EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT. 

Christ as truly died as a substitute for the sinner as 
Damon could have died as a substitute for Pythias. 
Yet, to make the parallel complete, Damon should so 
die for Pythias as that, unless Pythias should accept 
the substitution of Damon in all its conditions, he 
should not receive its benefits, and Damon's death 
should be for him in vain ; Pythias may be as right- 
fully executed as if Damon had not died. If the sinner 
accept not the atonement, but deny the Lord that 
bought him, Christ has died for him in vain ; he per- 
ishes for whom Christ died. If the whole human race 
were to reject the atonement, the atonement would be 
a demonstration of the righteousness and goodness of 
God, but would be productive of aggravation of human 
guilt, rather than of salvation from it. The imputation 



Doctrines of Methodism. 



131 



of the sin of nian, or his punishment, to Christ, is but 
a popular conception, justifiable, if understood as only 
conceptual ; just as we might say that the crime of 
Pythias was imputed to Damon in order that we also 
might be able to say that Damon was punished instead 
of Pythias. In strictness of language and thought, 
neither crime, guilt, nor punishment is personally trans- 
ferable. 

Christ died for all men, and for every man, and for 
no one man more than for another. The personal, vol- 
untary reception of the atonement, in its full conditions, 
by the sinner himself, constitutes the difference between 
one man and another in the obtainment of its benefits. 
A fountain stands for the entire inhabitants of a town, 
for one man no more than for another ; and the per- 
sonal drawing and drinking of the water may consti- 
tute the only difference in the enjoyment of its benefits. 
The atonement itself is universal and irrespective; the 
personal appropriation, by which the individual sinner 
secures his share of its benefits, is in each case particular. 

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 

The method by which the sinner appropriates a share 
of the benefits of the atonement personally to himself 
is comprehensively said to be by faith. By the works 
of the law, that is, by a Christless morality, can no flesh 
be justified. The law finds us in sin and in depravity, 
made responsible by volitional action, and reveals our 
sin unto us. When its perfectness is comprehended, all 
hopes of meeting its full demands must die within us. 
We can, therefore, only hope for salvation by the ac- 
ceptance of the offered atonement for past sins and 
future short-comings. 

The faith which justifies implies the belief of the in- 
tellect, the accord of the affections, and the submissive 



132 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



acceptance by the will. By this entire act of the whole 
soul the sinner surrenders himself to Christ for salva- 
tion. The sincerity of this faith implies the full renun- 
ciation of sin by repentance, and the full self-commit- 
ment to obedience to Christ. This act of the sinner is 
accepted of God, and is imputed to him for righteous- 
ness. By the law of the redemptive kingdom, he stands 
justified before God for all his sins past; the record of 
condemnation is blotted out, and his name is enrolled in 
the Lamb's book of life. In accordance with the condi- 
tions of the atonement, the Holy Spirit is now imparted 
unto him, not merely in its convicting, but in its wit- 
nessing, enlightening, strengthening, and sanctifying 
power. 

This faith, by the ordinary laws of mind, is preceded 
by normal preparatories, namely, by the ordinary gra- 
cious ability bestowed through the atonement, by per- 
ception and reception of truth, by conscientious feeling, 
by exercise of reason, by prayer to God, by realization 
of sin, by successive stages of preparatory faith in the 
revelations of the law and the Gospel. Repentance 
toward God precedes the act of justifying faith in Jesus 
Christ. The immediate performance of this whole work 
is in one sense requirahle of the sinner, since the law de- 
mands his punishment for past sins, and the wrath of 
God abides upon him, until the moment of his justifica- 
tion. His inability instantaneously to perform the 
whole work required is self-superinduced by his past 
sinful life, and is, therefore, not excusatory. Yet it is 
not in accordance with the laws of mind to expect, or to 
teach, that the whole process actnally can be instanta- 
neously accomplished. 

The gracious influences of the Spirit ever precede our 
action, working within us both to will and to do, and are 
ever graciously given more abundantly upon our action; 



Doctrines of Methodism. 



133 



so that in attaining justifying grace God and man pre- 
viously co-operate. 

Though the convicting influences of the Spirit are 
often, for a time, to a degree irresistible, measurably 
awakening the conscience and convincing the reason, in 
spite of our resistance, yet neither is the influence that 
results in saving faith, nor the saving grace which fol- 
lows, properly irresistible by the will. Justifying faith 
is voluntary and free. The soul is normally able to 
withhold it ; nor is the operation of the Spirit such as 
necessitatively to secure it. 

We are not saved by the merit of faith. Faith may 
indeed be considered in one sense as a work, a good 
work, a right work, the rightest work which, in the 
case, the sinner can perform. It has in itself the same 
sort of good desert, or ethical merit, as we ascribe to 
every act which in its given place is morally right. 
The contrary act would be morally wrong. And it is 
because of the meetness and ethical fitness and moral 
rightness in the case, that faith is selected as the proper 
medium of reconciliation and acceptance. Yet the value 
of this faith is not such as that it merits the salvation 
sequently bestowed upon it. Abstractly, God might 
rightfully drop the being into non-existence at the in- 
stant of its accomplished faith. The sinner has pre- 
sented no equivalent for the salvation he receives, and 
he is truly saved by the free and abounding grace of 
God. 

We do not hold that it is necessary, in order to the 
graciousness of our justification, that the faith should be 
resistlessly secured by the previous operation of God. 
Nor is it necessary for the graciousness of this salva- 
tion, that the act of faith should, by the natural laws of 
mind, be secured by the antecedent operation necessita- 
tively, as the assent of the intellect is secured by a 



134 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 

mathematical demonstration. For even those who hold 
to this necessitative securement believe that all right 
acts of the will are secured in the same way, so that by 
their own view there is as much moral merit in the act 
of accepting faith as in any other right, free-volitional 
act. The difference between us here lies, not in the 
meritoriousness we are bound to ascribe to the accept- 
ing act of the will, but in our views of the nature of 
the freedom of the will itself. By our views of the 
freedom of the will, it is necessary to the responsibility 
or moral good desert of an act, and of this as of all 
other acts, that it should be performed with full power 
of other action instead. And when this act is performed 
in the possession of such power, we are no more obliged 
to ascribe the great salvation, of which it is the condi- 
tion, to the merit of the act than our brethren opposed 
are obliged to ascribe the salvation to the merit of the 
necessitated act. 

POSSIBILITY OF APOSTASY. 

In full consistency with that doctrine of human free- 
dom and responsibility which pervades our theology, 
we maintain that, inasmuch as we were free in first per- 
forming the conditions of salvation, so we are free in 
the continuance or cessation of their performance. The 
volition by which we accepted the terms, we could have 
withheld; neither our probation nor our freedom on 
that test-point has ceased at our conversion. Amid the 
temptations, the unbeliefs, and the backslidings of life, 
the test-question may again and again recur, whether 
we shall hold fast our first faith ; and there still exists 
the same freedom for decision for either alternative. 
The different views of our two theologies on this point 
are truly logical corollaries from their antecedent views 
of free agency and responsibility. If it be consistent 



Doctrines of Methodism. 



135 



with free probation that God not only require the con- 
sent of our will for justification, but also causatively 
secure it, that same causative securement must also ne- 
cessitate our persevering volition. But it seems to us a 
perfect contradiction of probation and of the freedom 
for the act to be absolutely secured. 

We affirm, indeed, that God grants full enabling grace 
to persevere. He protects us so that none can snatch 
us from our Father's hand, nor separate us from the 
love of God ; he keeps, supports, and guards ; he con- 
firms us when we are strong, and raises us when we 
are fallen ; but he performs all this for us, not as things, 
but as agents from whom the consenting accordance 
and co-operation are conditionally presumed, both in 
the promise and performance of all these preserving 
acts of grace. After all these gracious aids on the 
part of God, there still remains, by the very nature of 
free agency, an ultimate element of selfhood, which 
alternately decides whether or not that grace shall be 
in vain. That free selfhood intrinsically remains, how- 
ever it may sometimes objectively be circumscribed, 
through the entire existence of the self. 

Promises, no doubt there are, in abundance, in the 
word of God, which are verbally in unconditioned form. 
Yet the law of conditionality, belonging, as it does, to 
the gospel terms of salvation, is ever to be held as im- 
plied. Were that all-pervading law of conditionality 
but once clearly expressed for all, it would be unrea- 
sonable to expect that it should be slavishly inserted, 
and never implied or assumed in any verbal form of 
the promise. Much more, when that conditionality is 
abundantly and explicitly declared, are we bound to 
hold it as implied in those passages where God engages 
faithfully to perform the divine side of the gracious 
covenant. 



136 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



REGENERATION. 

We have said that, consequent upon our justification, 
the Holy Spirit is imparted unto us no longer in its mere 
convicting power, but in its enlightening, quickening 
energy ; giving us not, indeed, a new organic faculty, 
but the power and disposition, with our existing facul- 
ties, freely to love God with all our heart, and our 
neighbor as ourselves. This is regeneration. Though 
always concomitant with justification, it is in the order 
of nature consequent. So truly new is this gift by the 
Holy Spirit, so new and powerful are the views, feeling, 
purposes of the man, that it is said he is a new creature ; 
that all things with him are made new ; that he is born 
anew, born of God, regenerated. He is now a child of 
God — a member of the justified family of God. 

We thus hold that regeneration succeeds justification. 
It is the unregenerate who is first convinced of sin by 
the Holy Spirit, who considers upon his wicked ways 
and seeks repentance, who examines the law of God and 
the Gospel of Christ in order to learn the method of 
escaping the wrath to come, who bows in penitent prayer 
for the continuing guidance of the Holy Spirit in order 
to the accomplishment of the work, and who does at 
successive points receive 1 in consequence of these his 
preparatory doings, the gracious aid of God. To the 
question, can these actions of the unregenerate man be 
holy, and so acceptable to God, we seem to ourselves to 
have abundant answer. They are not holy in the abso- 
lute sense of the word ; and yet in their place they are 
acceptable and accepted by God, as by him prescribed 
to the man in his case. As the first step of the prodi- 
gal son, though performed in the land of his profligacy, 
at a moment when he should be in his father's house, 
was the lightest he could in the case perform, was the 



Doctrixes of Methodism. 



137 



necessary condition to his return, so that act of the 
prodigal was accepted, even before the prodigal himself 
was accepted. It is not necessary that an act be abso- 
lutely holy in order to God's bestowing upon it a relative 
approbation. God can confer an imputative holiness, 
even upon the utensils of the temple. In the substance 
and in the organism of man God recognizes, because 
there exists notwithstanding its pravity, a sublime ex- 
cellence, both of substance and structure. Man's im- 
mortality and high moral being, intellect, affections, 
conscience, and will, with his power of realizing eter- 
nity, retain him, fallen as he is, at the head of God's 
lower creation. Though the gold be totally dim, God 
cognizes the preciousness of its substance. Even while 
dead in trespasses and sins, his holiness permits him 
to love us, and he still knows how to accept us. And 
when, by the aid of the Holy Spirit, man before re- 
pentance performs works meet for repentance, and be- 
fore justifying faith exercises faith preparatory to 
justification, God conventionally accepts those works 
and faith, so far as they go, before he fully accepts the 
man; and when, by the enabling aid of the Holy Spirit, 
he performs before acceptance the faith conditional to 
acceptance, God justifies him — "justifies the ungodly." 
Unless the sinner can perform preparatory and condu- 
cive acts to regeneration, if all actions are wicked, and 
equally wicked, and equally unacceptable to God, then 
we see not how a sinner can take any course toward 
regeneration and salvation. The whole work appears 
arbitrary and unconditioned, and the bewildered sinner 
has only to sit and wait the sovereign grace. 

Regeneration is the act of God. It presupposes con- 
ditions previously performed by the man ; but in the 
work itself God is the doer, and man the submissive re- 
cipient. It presupposes anterior justification, and the 



138 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



performance, by the free-will of the sinner, of all the 
conditions requisite to the work. The Holy Spirit aids 
in those conditioned acts, but, except, perhaps, at par- 
ticular points, never necessitates. The sinner acts as a 
free, responsible agent, and his free agency, so far forth 
as it exists and extends, excludes necessitation or pre- 
destination as its contradictory. Upon the decision and 
choice of the man as a free agent it ultimately depends 
whether the condition be performed and salvation at- 
tained, or rejected and eternal death incurred. This is 
the great alternative point of man's free probation. 
From his own essential and central self is the decision 
most freely made ; upon his own central and essential 
self must the eternal responsibility rest. And, hereby, 
though man be condemned, God shall be justified. 

WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT. 

Where God performs directly the work of justifica- 
tion and of regeneration, is it not to be expected that 
he will as directly give notice of so wonderful a mercy ? 
And this thought suggests the reasonableness of the 
doctrine of the witness of the Spirit, directly testifying 
to us that we are born of God. 

The witness of our own spirit is that self-judgment 
which we are rationally able to pronounce, in the light 
of consciousness and Scripture, that we are the children 
of God. This is a logical inference, drawn from the 
fruits we find, by self-examination, in our minds and 
external conduct. 

But besides this, is there not felt in every deep relig- 
ious experience, a simple, firm assurance, like an intui- 
tion, by which we are made to feel calmly certain that 
all is blessedly right between God and our own soul ? 
Does not this assurance seem to come into the heart as 
from some outer source ? Does it not come as in answer 



Doctrines of Methodism. 



139 



to prayer, and in direction, as if from him to whom we 
pray? Scripture surely makes the assuring and wit- 
nessing act of the Spirit to be as immediate and direct 
as the justifying or regenerating acts. Hereby, then, 
we have the witness of God's Spirit, concurrent with 
the 'witness of our own sj^irit, testifying to the work of 
our justification and adoption. " The Spirit itself bear- 
eth witness with our spirit that we are the children of 
God." Rom. viii, 16. 

ELECTION AND REPROBATION. 

All God's choices are elections. Some of these elec- 
tions are unconditional ; namely, all his predetermina- 
tions in regard to material, non-volitional objects, the 
absolute disposing of which violates no free agency in 
the exercise of responsible volition. But there is also a 
class of conditional elections or predeterminations by 
God, which are so far contingent as that they are con- 
ditioned upon the actual performance of certain free 
acts by the finite agent as foreseen. Those free acts, 
required by God as conditions to this election, are by 
divine grace placed in the power of every responsible 
agent, so that the primary reason why any are not 
elected is, that they do not exercise their power of meet- 
ing those conditions. And since every responsible agent 
has the power to make his own calling and election 
sure, and every elect person has full power to reject 
the conditions, so it is not true that the number of the 
elect can be neither increased nor diminished. Every 
man has gracious power to be elected according to the 
eternal purpose of God. All men may be saved. Ev- 
ery individual, by grace divine, may place himself in 
the number of those who are chosen from before the 
foundation of the world. The reprobates are those who, 
abusing the conferred grace of God, resisting the Holy 



140 Essays, Reviews, and Disco ueses. 



Spirit, reject the conditions of salvation, and so fail to 
present the necessary tests to their election. The elect 
are chosen unto good works, to holy faith, to persever- 
ing love, to a full manifestation of the power of the 
Gospel during their probationary life, and upon their 
lull performance of this their work and mission they 
attain, through grace divine, to a rich, unmerited sal- 
vation. 

IMMUTABILITY OF THE LAW. 

The law, as given to Adam, requiring pure and per- 
fect holiness, has never been withdrawn from the race, 
and can never be changed. It is its perfectness and 
immutability which necessitate the atonement and the 
redemption. Through our whole human history, its 
pure ideal stands to reveal to us, by our distance be- 
neath its level, the depth of our fall. Whether our sin 
be responsible or not, it is by the law that we measure 
its amount. By it, too, Ave measure the elevation 
through which we must pass by the redemption to our 
final restorement in the glorification. Yet inasmuch as 
we have, by our own voluntary sinfulness, ratified our 
original sin, and taken upon ourselves the control and 
the guilt of our sinful nature, so the law furnishes us 
the measure of our voluntary ruin. And for the finally 
impenitent, inasmuch as they had the means to the full 
restorement in the glorification, the law furnishes the 
just amount of their final condemnation. The law is, 
indeed, holy, just, and good ; yet for the finally guilty, 
by the law is the knowledge of sin and the experience 
of hell. By the deeds of that law can no flesh hope to 
be justified. In the presence of that law can no human 
merit stand. Under the Christless infliction of its pen- 
alty must all flesh die. For one and for all the only 
hope of salvation is by the way of faith alone, in the 
abounding atonement of the dying son of God. 



Doctrines of Methodism. 141 



ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION, OR CHRISTIAN PERFECTION. 

At our justification we are held by God as absolved 
from all past sin, and treated as if perfectly pure from 
the guilt of sin. The law, though not abolished, and 
though it still remains the standard of our condemna- 
tion, apart from Christ, is not the standard of our accept- 
ance through Christ. If, then, we are accepted by the 
law of faith, do we also receive from Christ the power 
to retain that undiminished acceptance without our 
complete fulfillment of the pure Adamic law? 

Experience shows, at any rate, that few, if any, do, 
from the moment of their justification, retain the full- 
ness of that first acceptance. Though regenerate, and 
breathing holy aspirations after holiness empowered 
within them by the blessed Spirit, such is still the in- 
experience and ignorance of the ways of Satan, such is 
the natural bent of former habit, and such the unsteadi- 
ness of the will, that most, if not all, do grieve the 
Holy Spirit, and come under condemnation ; not, in- 
deed, the condemnation of the entire unbeliever, but the 
condemnation of an offending child. Such a condem- 
nation, the result of spiritual weakness, endangers apos- 
tasy ; and the warning of God then is : " Be watchful, 
and strengthen the things that remain and are ready 
to die, for I have not found thy works perfect before 
God." Rev. iii, 2. If, now, through the Holy Spirit 
granted under the atonement, the soul of the earnest 
Christian be so spiritually enlightened and strength- 
ened that it may return by repentance to the gracious 
guiltlessness of its first justification, and be enabled to 
retain the fullness of the divine acceptance, his " works " 
may be found " perfect before God " — perfect, not ac- 
cording to the Adamic Law, but perfect by the stand- 
ard of his ever justifying acceptance, the law of faith. 



142 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



Our views may, perhaps, appear, then, in the following 
formula : 

Through a maturity of Christian experience and the 
fullness of the Spirit imparted, the spiritual powers of 
the faithful Christian may be so strengthened that he 
may, and often does, maintain, through grace, for a 
longer or shorter period, a permanent state of the undi- 
minished fullness of his acceptance with God, and under 
no more actual condemnation than at the moment of his 
justification. 

Every thing which has attained the normal complete- 
ness of its own class or kind is rightly called perfect. 
Not after an ideal, but a normal standard, we speak of 
a perfect egg, a perfect chicken, a perfect fall-grown fowl. 
There may be a perfect child or a perfect man. And 
every thing which is wanting in none of the normal 
complement of qualities, in normal degree, is perfect in 
its class. Now the Christian who has attained to the 
description of our formula, is at the normal standard of 
a perfect man in Christ. We use an abundantly script- 
ural term in calling this a state of Christian perfection. 
It is a state in which all the normal qualities of the 
Christian are permanently, or with more or less contin- 
uity, possessed in the proper completeness. And as 
this spiritual strength and power over and against sin, 
derived from the Holy Spirit, is sanctification, so in the 
completeness which we have described, it is not improp- 
erly, perhaps, by us called entire sanctification. 

Of this state of sanctification, the actual divine accept- 
ance, in its uncondemning fullness, is, according to our 
present statement, the actual standard. With how 
much short-coming from the perfect law this is in any 
case possible, the Spirit is itself in every case judge. It 
may, therefore, not be possible to answer this question 
by antecedent words, especially to a metaphysician, de- 



Doctrines of Methodism. 



143 



raanding absolute exactness ; and in this fact, perhaps, 
consists the basis of the complaint often made by the- 
ologians, that they cannot understand the thing we 
attempt to describe. 

The evangelic law requires love with all our present 
feeble powers to God, and to our neighbor as ourselves. 
As we are unable to love God with full Adamic powers, 
the perfect law even then condemns us. Moral weak- 
nesses contracted by past sinful habits, moral igno- 
rances resulting from our own past fault, prejudices of 
which we are more or less unconscious, nervous irrita- 
bilities and physical idiosyncrasies, may produce con- 
demnation from censorious man, where there is still 
acceptance from him who "knoweth our frame." So 
far as the will is concerned, Mr. Wesley excluded 
from the sanctified state all " voluntary transgressions ; " 
but it is questionable whether under the term " invol- 
untary " he did not really include countless numbers 
of minuter volitions, inevitably escaping from our moral 
weakness, in spite of our most vigorous tone of spirit- 
ual purpose and spiritual activity. With how much of 
all these "infirmities" the uninterrupted fullness of the 
divine approbation can consist, it is, as we before re- 
marked, impossible in human words exactly to define, 
even if we could exactly conceive. Thus much, at any 
rate, is fully certain, that Leighton correctly describes 
it as an " imperfect perfection." Ample work, doubt- 
less, is found from these short-comings for a permanent 
exercise of the most perfect repentance, as well as the 
most perfect faith in the blood of Christ. Ample rea- 
sons will be found for praying, "Forgive us our tres- 
passes." Ample verge there is for all those texts of 
Scripture which affirm that there is none that "sinneth 
not;" that is, in the wider sense of the word "sin." 
Nor is there any difficulty in understanding how the 



144 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



most exalted of our Christian saints, in the light of the 
pure and perfect law, looking at themselves with the 
eye of a sanctified conscience, can scarce find words 
sufficient to express their deep humiliation, not only for 
the depths of the fall of their own nature, but for their 
own short-comings and for their sins against infinite 
purity. 

But the law is our school-master to drive us to Christ. 
And yet when in Christ it is not our duty to keep our 
shuddering eyes perpetually fixed upon the school-mas- 
ter. Greater spiritual power, as well as higher spiritual 
joy, can be derived from dwelling in Christ, and hold- 
ing up before ourselves the measure of Christian holi- 
ness we can attain through him. A goal is thus set up 
for our holy ambition ; a positive standard for which 
we may labor. Thence a more cheerful piety arises in 
him who contemplates what he may gain through Christ 
than in him who is ever trembling under the lash of the 
law, and who is ever exclaiming, "I am all sin, and 
nothing but sin." Hence, as the doctrine of apostasy 
constitutes a real warning against backsliding and sin, 
so the doctrine of Christian perfection is a living incite- 
ment to progressive holiness. 

PERPETUITY OF MAN'S FREE AGENCY. 

By substance and by conformation of his spiritual 
nature, man is intrinsically a free agent, and such he 
doubtless is through all the stages of his existence. 
That free agency may be externally restricted by the 
absence of alternatives of choice, or by external circum- 
scription from given courses, or to some one particular 
course. By the depravation of the fall, without chang- 
ing his intrinsic nature as a free agent, the way of 
righteousness and the possibility of pleasing God were 
placed beyond his reach. Neither the motive nor the 



Doctrines of Methodism. 



145 



object were to him a possibility. So the sinner who, 
by perseverance in sin, destroys his moral sensibilities, 
diminishes, and ultimately destroys, the avenues to a 
course of righteousness. The damned, inclosed in hell 
are surrounded by objective, insuperable obstacles to 
even choosing true repentance and return to holiness. 
The freedom of the will is, in all these cases, objectively 
obstructed, not intrinsically destroyed. Nevertheless, 
as in these last two cases the suppression of the action 
of the will is self -superinduced it furnishes no excuse. 
The free agency still continues, and no bar to penal 
responsibility can arise from these self-imposed restric- 
tions. 

So, also, the holy being in heaven is still intrinsically 
a free agent. The radical nature of his being, in this 
respect, is not changed. But the conditions of the pos- 
sible choice of sin are removed from around his will. 
His glorified body can be neither stimulant nor instru- 
ment of sin ; the sphere of heaven is no possible place 
of sin ; the holy atmosphere of heaven, the imbreathed 
Spirit of God, exclude all possible motive for sin. Sin 
is, therefore, objectively impossible. Yet, inasmuch as 
by achieving his probationary mission the glorified soul 
has, through grace, attained to glory, God does recog- 
nize in his holy service of praise all the rewardable 
merit of his most free performance during the period 
of his probation. 

CONCLUSION. 

Upon the whole, the writer of this article has doubt- 
less failed in his task if he has not made it conceivable 
to a candid examiner from the other side that our 
Arminianism is a well-defined, symmetrical system, 
which a mind possessed of the broadest logical consist- 
ency may reasonably be imagined to accept as the best 
10 



146 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



approximation to a satisfactory solution of the facts of 
the divine government. It is an attempt to show the 
reconcilability of the divine sovereignty in the pleni- 
tude of its holiness with the freedom and responsibility 
of man, by a method securing the divine honor, and 
affording the most powerful motives for human piety. 
It may further appear, that as both systems evidently 
aim at these great objects, though by methods subordi- 
nate^ different, a respectful consideration of each oth- 
er's method may be beneficial to both sides. If this 
article shall exert any favorable influence toward that 
result, it will be greatly due, as we take pleasure here 
and elsewhere in recording, to the truly Christian court- 
esy, both in matter and manner, with which the present 
writer has repeatedly been editorially invited to furnish 
it for these pages. We are happy to acknowledge the 
eminent style of piety often attained under the teach- 
ings of Calvinism. We place very high in the calendar 
of true Christian saintship the names of a Calvin, a 
Baxter, an Edwards, and a Payson. Candid Calvinists 
will place in" the same rank the names of Arminius, 
Henry More, Fletcher of Madeley, and Francis Asbury. 



INORGANIC METHODISM.* 

Dr. Curry's able article and this our little essay in 
response, ought, perhaps, to exchange titles. He has 
stated the case, really, of inorganic Methodism, and has 
endeavored to read its extremer principles into our 
history and institutions. We propose to give a brief, 
varying, yet not wholly contradictory view, stating 
more decisively the organic element in Methodism, 
* Methodist Quarterly Review, 1876, p. 162. 



Inorganic Methodism. 



147 



leaving the reader to form his own conclusions from 
reason and Scripture. His closing paragraphs, frankly 
indorsing the adoption and permanence of our episco- 
pacy, without any essential change, will be received by 
the large body of our readers with gratification. 

1. We agree that a call to the preaching of the Gospel 
is the true requisite for every true minister. To be 
"moved by the Holy Ghost" thereto is the formula we 
have derived from the English Church. And so St. 
Paul tells us that God "gave" (Eph. iv, 11) the various 
ministries, or rather ministers. He " gave " apostles, 
evangelists, pastors, and teachers. The mission, right, 
and authority of each of these classes depended, it must 
be carefully noted, on "the measure of the gift." The 
call of the called extended only to the extent of the call. 
If a "teacher" undertook to be an "apostle" he was a 
usurper, and liable to fall into schism. It does not fol- 
low that every "called" preacher is also a "called" 
minister in every respect. He may be " called " as an 
evangelist, to rouse the people, and yet not as an elder, 
to administer government and sacrament. Taking the 
natural talent as a basis, the Spirit bestowed upon the 
man the gracious "gift," to be exercised within the 
limits required by the common good and order of. the 
Church. But, 

2. If there is a call of the individual to the ministry, 
there is also, still more emphatically, a call of the Chris- 
tian body to be a Church. When on an island, like 
ancient Crete, there is a scattered number of Christians, 
it is their duty to gravitate toward each other, to unify, 
and to organize into a governmental system. This duty 
is based upon the social instinct; on the "impossibility 
of going to heaven alone;" and on the supreme impor- 
tance that the Christian body should form itself into not 
only a commonwealth, but into an army for the conquest 



1-18 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



of the world. St. Paul exhorted not only the Church of 
Corinth, but all the Churches of Achaia together, "That 
ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no di- 
visions among you ; but that ye be perfectly joined 
together in the same mind, and in the same judgment." 
Equally true is it that this Church army should be 
officered and commanded. It should have its organiza- 
tion and its ordinances, constituting its form and iden- 
tity. St. Paul's favorite image is the human body 
(Eph. iv, 3-16), which image he uses to illustrate how 
each part must adhere to its own functions, aud how 
thereby the common life and energy would be most tri- 
umphant. The ambitious little foot must not aspire to 
be the head. The jaunty little evangelist, the brilliant 
Strawbridge of the day, however successful in sallying 
out, getting up revivals, and raising rural societies, must 
not, therefore, assume to be an apostle, or even, perhaps, 
a pastor, unless in the blessed order of the one body. 
Otherwise, there would be a schism between him and 
the apostle ; but the Strawbridge, and not the apostle, 
would be the schismatic. 

3. It is the "call" of the Church to test and judge 
"the call" of the minister. It is not sufficient for a 
man to start up and declare, upon his own motion, that 
he is " called," to authorize him to exercise the organic 
ordinances of the Church. It is in the Church that lies 
the duty and right to furnish from her bosom and hand, 
and to authenticate and externnlly commission, the min- 
istry. Herein lies "the priesthood of the people;" that 
out of the holy people shall go forth a holy ministry. 
Both to Timothy and to Titus St. Paul furnishes a large 
section of a brief letter in describing what sort of a 
person the elder and the deacon should be. It was not 
enough that he professed to be "called of God." He 
must exhibit a number of good traits to Timothy's au- 



Inorganic Methodism. 



149 



thoritative eye. He must be well reported to Timothy 
by the Church. He must be " proved." No man could 
announce himself as elder, and of his own sweet will go 
to administering ordinances and ordination. He might 
be a brilliant evangelist, and yet unfit for an elder. 
The very fact that, in a spirit of "Irish independence," 
he insisted on being an elder when he was only an evan- 
gelist, without regard to organic order, would have 
rendered his fitness suspicious, and have made him a 
probable schismatic. Separation from a true organic 
Church is justifiable only on grounds of the rig I it of 
revolution. On any less ground it is schism. 

4. If Strawbridge had " a call " to be an evangelist, 
Wesley had far more a divine " call " instrunientally to 
inaugurate the movement called Methodism, and to or- 
ganize and control it. The Almighty made him a n.itural 
autocrat. Upon that noble b isis the divine Spirit, as 
usual, based its charism and its mission, and his call 
was in extent according to the measure of his gift. It 
was something more than " providential," unless the 
charism be held a part of the providence. His call to 
his mission as founder-apostle was far more special and 
far more divine thin Strawbridge's call was to the 
preaching of the Gospel under and within the great 
organic movement. What this centralizing and organ- 
izing character of both Wesley and Asbury signifies we 
may all judge by comparing Wesley's work with White - 
field's. Why is it that Whitefield's work has left little 
trace behind it, and Wesley's is filling the world ? The 
reply, humanly, is organism. But for the autocracy of 
Wesley, which reached America through Asbury, the 
sporadic work of men like Strawbridge would have 
been like water spilled upon the ground. When, then, 
in opposition to Wesley, to the Conference, to the unity 
and power of the whole movement, Strawbridge in- 



150 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



sisted by willful individualism to administer the sacra- 
ments, he was acting, however sincerely and heroically, 
out of the divine order, and was a schismatic. And 
when we are told that he had a right to administer 
sacraments, there still would remain the question, Was 
it right for him to exercise his right? Nothing is more 
common than rights in abeyance; rights which there is 
no justifiable occasion for exerting. Rightly was his 
name left off those " Minutes " whose compact he vio- 
lated. His evangelism seems to have ceased, and we 
rejoice at the final testimony that he died "in great 
peace." When in virtue of his call to be an evangelist 
he assumed the functions of an elder, he impinged 
against the far higher call of Wesley, and, like a beau- 
tiful but slender yacht dashing against the Great East- 
ern., he wrecked himself. 

5. Ordination by laying on of hands, and in no differ- 
ent manner, is sanctioned by Scripture example. Thrice 
did we rub our eyes in wonder, and read again the words 
on page 127, that this mode of ordination was, with cer- 
tainty, sanctioned only by "patristic authority." The 
imposition of hands is authorized in both the Old and 
New Testaments for at least three several purposes: as 
a mode of blessing, of imparting the Holy Ghost, of con- 
ferring sacred office and authority. It was performed 
by divine command by Moses, for this last purpose, upon 
Joshua. Num. xxii, 23. Twice in the Acts of the Apos- 
tles is ordination by the laying on of hands mentioned, 
namely: that of the deacons by the apostles (Acts vi, 6), 
and that of Paul and Barnabas as apostles in mission to 
the Gentiles. Acts xiii, 3. Three times is the laying on of 
hands, mentioned by St. Paul in his Epistles to Timothy, 
an ordination thereby to the ministry. Twice it is used 
in reference to the setting apart of Timothy to his office 
by St. Paul and the presbytery. Once, in the midst of 



Inorganic Methodism. 



151 



cautions to Timothy against appointing elders hastily, 
he says: "Lay hands suddenly on no man." This can 
have no other meaning than that St. Paul's method of 
ordination to eldership was by laying on of hands. And 
this method must, therefore, be read into all those 
ordinations by St. Paul of elders and deacons in all 
his Churches. The difference between the Scripture au- 
thority for baptism and that for ordination by imposition 
of hands is, that while the former has most explicit war- 
rant, both from Scripture example and also Scripture 
command, the latter has Scripture example only. The 
phrase in Heb. vi, 2, " doctrine of baptisms and laying 
on of hands," does decisively import that "the laying 
on of hands" was one of the doctrines of Christianity. 
And the assuming that it has no more Scripture author- 
ity than the " handing of a book " is an extravaganza. 
And the command, "Lay hands suddenly on no man," is 
not far from even a command to the laying on of hands. 
We may fairly say that this is the only form authorized, 
and is the form to be used. The not using it, is at least 
a disrespect to a divine example. There is, then, script- 
urally, a formal defect. When used in its full import 
and in the right spirit by the officer authorized by the 
Church, a divine authentication and authority are con- 
veyed. Nor is there any valid doubt that the New 
Testament practice of ordination has continued in unin- 
terrupted succession down to the present as truly as the 
Sabbath or the Lord's Supper. Those three parallel 
lines connect us — thanks to Wesley and our fathers — by 
a historic tie to the primitive Church. Nor is it in the 
spirit of our fathers, or of true Methodism, to wantonly 
break our historic connections with the post-apostolic 
catholic Church. In his letter to American Methodists 
authenticating Coke, Wesley rejoices that, by our na- 
tional independence, they are free to follow " Scripture 



152 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



and the primitive Church" and so can accept his epis- 
copacy. 

And these views we understand to be the fundament- 
al and constitutional views of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church from its first founding, at the Christmas Con- 
ference, until now. Our ordinations are, professedly, 
not a mere "blessing," nor a mere "recognizing" or 
"discerning." They are a solemn conveying from the 
body, the Church, through the ordainer as its agent, 
of an office, an authority, for most solemn functions. 
Nothing less than this can be meant by those awful 
words by which a bishop is, and has ever been, conse- 
crated : " The Lord pour upon thee the Holy Ghost 
for the office and work of a bishop in the Church of 
God now committed unto thee by the authority of the 
Church through the imposition of our hands, in the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost. Amen." These words are a triple blasphemy 
if it be not held that the Church by a divine authority 
communicates a divine office, dignity, and authority, 
through the mode of the laying on of hands, which 
mode alone is authorized by Scripture. Is this High- 
Churchism? It is the High-Churchism of our whole 
history. And those other words, to which we have all 
assented at our presbyterial ordination, are scarce less 
decisive: "The Lord pour upon thee the Holy Ghost for 
the office and work of an elder in the Church of God, 
now committed unto thee by the authority of the Church 
through the imposition of our hands." We think that 
any who should pronource ordination so used to be a 
"fetich" or an "incantation" would do well to recon- 
sider their words. 

Of this authentication the source is not the bishops 
(who are but its mere agents), nor the eldership, but 
the body, lay and ministerial, of the one whole Church. 



Inorganic Methodism. 



153 



And the pastor so ordained is not a mere hired-man of 
the particular charge to which he is sent; but the hum- 
blest of all our pastors is truly a representative of the 
whole Church y and what rightful thing he does in his 
legitimate sphere, the unity of the Church does through 
him. If directly and internally called of God, he is also 
mediately and externally called by the divinely ordain- 
ing Church. And it is in this twofold call that his 
authority and high dignity as minister and embassador 
of God consists. 

6. If Strawbridge was a permanent schismatic, the 
Fluvanna Conference, which undertook the performance 
of spontaneous, mutual presbyterian (if it could be called 
even "presbyterian") ordination, was briefly schismatic; 
but it soon saw its mistake, and nobly, with perfect 
unanimity, redeemed itself. The men were, like Straw- 
bridge, deeply holy men, and committed their error, not 
like him, with mere "persistent individualism," but in 
the spirit of perfect love. For years the child had 
grown up without baptism, and the convert had, indeed, 
received the love-feast but not the holy supper. The 
southern ministers, by a large majority, were coming to 
the conclusion to disobey Wesley and break with the 
Church by self -ordination. In accordance with the then 
custom of holding two or three sessions a year, and yet 
considering them all one Annual Conference, the north- 
ern minsters (who were, almost to a man, opposed to 
self-ordination) assembled under Asbury at Baltimore. 
This was done not for the convenience of Asbury alone, 
but for the convenience of all the northern preachers, 
whom the war impeded in going to Virginia and attend- 
ing the fuller regular Conference. They claimed this 
Baltimore assemblage to be only a " preparatory Con- 
ference." The southerly Conference, really representing 
but the southern section, did, by a majority of a major- 



154 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



ity (and so, perhaps, a minority of the whole ministry) 
for a brief period inaugurate the separation movement. 
They ordained presbyters, and for one year we were 
actually a Presbyterian Church ! But at the next reg- 
ular session of the Conference this ephemeral presby- 
tery evaporated into thin air! Asbury, attended by 
Garrettson and Watters, visited and addressed the Con- 
ference. He read Wesley's thoughts against separation 
from the Church of England, showed Wesley's private 
letters of instruction, and set before them the views of 
the northern preachers touching loyalty to Wesley and 
the great Methodist movement. For a while the pres- 
byterians stood firm. But seasons of prayer took place, 
an effusion of the Spirit seemed to overwhelm them, 
and, amid the rush of pentecostal feeling, all hearts 
fused into one. In that glow of holy union it was 
agreed to give up the ordinations and await the decision 
of Mr. Wesley on the subject. Thus did the divine 
Spirit teach these holy men to subject their " call " to 
the higher "call" of Wesley and Methodism. For four 
long years did our unanimous American Methodism wait 
before Wesley could bring himself to the ordination of 
Coke and the organization of an episcopacy. 

V. The ordination of Coke by Wesley, which seems 
to be slightingly styled a "unique affair," has- long ap- 
peared to us one of the grandest acts of Wesley's life. 
It cleared American Methodism at one brave stroke 
alike from all presbyterian movements, all Anglican 
claims, and all internal schisms. And from that time 
to this, thanks be to God ! we have stood out before 
Christendom on our own high plane, "rejoicing as a 
strong man to run a race." It seems too slightingly 
said, also, that " Wesley had been appealed to by vari- 
ous persons " to give us a Church government. Pie did 
so after the union above described, in compliance with 



Lff organic Methodism. 



155 



the unanimous request of American Methodism, pa- 
tiently waiting for four years. If popular assent makes 
ecclesiastical government legitimate, no act was ever 
more legitimate, no government was ever more legiti- 
mate, than Wesley's in this matter. It was he, not 
they, who hesitated or doubted; and the length of their 
waiting shows that the independent presbyterian move- 
ment was never deep in the hearts of the people, and 
that preachers and people rejected with conscious depth 
and firmness every other thought than the getting an 
episcopacy from Wesley. Fur it was an episcopacy 
they expected. They were Chureh-of-England people, 
Episcopalians. They knew that Wesley disliked pres- 
byterian government, and preferred episcopacy. And 
when, from Wesley, Coke came, the Conference accept- 
ed him with a unanimous vote. And they elected 
Asbnry with unanimous vote. And their first eucharist 
they partook with holy rapture, and from one end of 
the Conned ion to the other no voice was heard but 
joyful acceptance The Conference received Wesley's 
authentication of Coke, designating it explicitly as 
" letters of episcopal orders ; " they adopted Wesley's 
ritual of ordaining three grades; and they inaugurated 
a "Methodist Episcopal Church."' 

S. As to the logical grounds of Mr. Wesley's ordina- 
tion, we endeavored to show four years ago the follow- 
ing points: 1. After Mr. Wesley's reading of Lord King, 
both he and the British Conference still avowed the 
belief that there are three proper orders in the New 
Testament, which are not, however, necessary to the 
absolute validity of a Church. 2. Nevertheless, the 
eldership is essentially the one order from which the 
other two are derivative. Not that a number of elders 
have a right to get together and ordain a bishop when 
they please. If they have the right, it is not right for 



156 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



them ordinarily to use the right. Wesley declared, in 
1755, that it would be disorderly for him to so ordain, 
and yet when the "call" came his ordination was right. 
He, then, professedly, as being himself a regularly or- 
dained elder in the Church of God, performed, under 
the due extraordinary call, that ordaining act, the power 
to which inheres in the eldership. 3. It Avas the rise of 
_ a people formed by God requiring his ordaining action 
that presented the providential call. The charismatic 
call was not a miraculous inspiration, but essentially, 
we suppose, of the same nature as a call to the ministry, 
being, in fact, within the scope of his call to his wide 
ministry. And our Discipline has, from the beginning, 
contained both the statement that our episcopacy is 
"orders," and that in the eldership inheres the right 
to ordain bishops when the entire episcopate becomes 
vacant, and that the eldership and laity may, by full 
and formal process, modify or abolish the episcopacy. 

9. Wesley's ordaining act American Methodism ac- 
cepted, but English Methodism rejected. English 
Methodism organized a valid presbyterian Church, 
being, as an already isolated independent body, guilty 
therein of no schism, but liable to the felt defect of 
ignoring Wesley's act. Dr. Porter, in his Compendium 
of Methodism, furnishes ingenious suggestions why a 
body covering a narrow ground less needed a unifying 
episcopacy than our broad-spread communion. But Dr. 
Crane, in his Methodism and its Methods, points to 
some facts indicating that their rejection of the Wes- 
leyan episcopacy is involving serious consequences. 
We have said that secession from a given Church is 
schismatic, unless justifiable by the law of revolution. 
When so justified it is upon the Church, and not upon 
the seceders, that rests the guilt of the schism. There 
have been several secessions from the Methodist Epis- 



Inorganic Methodism. 



157 



copal Church, in which it is not for us at present to say- 
where the responsibility of the schism lay; but each 
one was, scripturally, a schism, with a responsibility 
somewhere. But we are in schism, and it behooves us 
as much as possible to diminish that schism by embrac- 
ing all in the spirit of love and union. Christendom, 
generally, is in a state of deplorable schism, and it is 
with great interest that we trace the yearnings of her 
broken fragments after reunion. What the precise form 
of that final reunion will be which shall fulfill on earth 
the high-priestly prayer of Christ we inquire with deep 
ponder, but are unable to know. We are inclined to 
the belief that its organic form will be voluntary epis- 
copacy; not compelled by the dogma of its necessity to 
the validity of a Church, but freely induced by the 
feeling that all other forms are less scripturally com- 
plete, and less efficient as a Church militant, as an 
army, for the conversion of the world. For it is the 
Wesleyanism of Wesley himself, that though a Church 
has a right to frame its own form, the best of all forms 
is the episcopal. 



METHODIST EPISCOPACY. 

Ordination, Historically at the Basis of the Church. 

We are obliged to decline the Quaker doctrine, that 
a man " called to preach" is as much a minister without 
ordination as with. He may be a " preacher," but he 
is not yet a minister until recognized by the Church ; 
and the New Testament form of that recognition is 
ordination. Ordinarily the unordained man should not 
preach. Still less should he administer the sacraments. 
This is the hitherto uncontradicted doctrine handed 
down to us from our Methodist fathers. For years our 



158 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



"societies" in America refused to be churches, and our 
" preachers " refused to be ministers, because they were 
not ordained. Our first Conferences passed rigid en- 
actments forbidding any "preacher" from administer- 
ing the ordinances until a Church, with an ordained 
ministry, was organized. When a few excellent preach- 
ers in Virginia took it upon themselves to commence 
mutual ordination in order to the sacramenis, the entire 
body of "preachers" and "societies" (not ministers 
and churches) united in repressing the movement. 
For four years they waited before Mr. Wesley would 
yield to their earnest and united request to furnish 
them with an ordained ministry competent for sacra- 
ments and churchdom. He did ordain two elders and 
a bishop. He did this upon the fundamental assump- 
tion that a man called of God to preach is not as much 
a minister before ordination as after. Our Conference 
received Mr. Wesley's missive as being truly Letters 
of Episcopal Orders. They received Coke and the 
elders expressly because they " were satisfied of the 
validity of their ordination." Ordination, therefore, 
historically lies at the basis of our Church. Even 
though it be at the expense of being held as making a 
"fetich" of ordination, we believe that our entire 
Church, ministry and people, now as ever, are ready to 
trample upon the enthusiastic Quaker doctrine that a 
man may as truly be a minister without ordination 
as with, as being fundamentally unmethodistical and 
untrue. 

Wesley's Ordination of Coke, Ms Grandest Executive Act. 

N~o writer as yet, nor even Wesley himself, has done 
full justice to the grandest executive act of Wesley's 
whole life — his ordination of bishops for American 
Methodism. When we read the babyish whimper of 



Methodist Episcopacy. 



159 



the letters of his brother Charles to him, and John's 
half-apologetic yet firm replies, we seem to wish that 
for a moment the latter could have been visited with 
the spirit of prophecy, enabling him to say: "Dear 
Brother Charles: I have now perforcned the crown- 
ing act of my life. By one bold stroke I have eman- 
cipated American Methodism from the nightmare of 
successional episcopacy, and given her a free, alert, 
voluntary superintendency. This act in 1784 will give 
to America a Church, which in 1884 will overspread the 
continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, gathering 
untold millions into her fold, and which with one hand 
shall check the growth of Popery, and roll back with 
the other the surging tide of Rationalism. The pure 
evangelic doctrines and the rich evangelic unction 
which God has enabled you and me to bestow upon her, 
she will maintain in full power, and she shall be the 
greatest gospel agent in the greatest of free Christian 
nations for spreading scriptural holiness through the 
land and through the earth." Wesley knew the simple 
righteousness of his own act, but he dreamed not of its 
sublimity as measured by its results. That sublimity 
we know ; and, realizing its grand measure, we laugh 
to scorn the puerilities with which the big episcopal 
sect in England and the little episcopal sect in America 
re-echo the effeminate whimpers of dear brother 
Charles. 

The General Conference may not Abolish Episcopal Ordination or 
Limit Episcopal Tenure. 

The discussion lately moved in regard to the epis- 
copal office seems to have sprung less from the spon- 
taneous feeling of the Church than from individual 
agencies. Its only good, we apprehend, will be to 
bring clearer views of the episcopacy before the minds 



160 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



of the Church. To our mind the following points are 
clear: 

1. However much the bishops are the creatures of 
the General Conference, a creature has his rights, and 
a creator is under obligations to exercise his powers 
under the laws of right and duty. The General Con- 
ference has the power to omit the election of bishops 
and so let the " creature " become extinct, just as it has 
the power to omit assembling together and becoming 
itself extinct, and just as the bishops have the power 
to omit appointing Annual Conferences and allowing 
them to become extinct. But, however these powers 
may exist, the right does not exist. The General Con- 
ference is bound conscientiously to elect the due num- 
ber of bishops, to ordain them, and to do what it can 
within constitutional limits to give efficiency and suc- 
cess to the office, so as to produce the best good to the 
Church, and the highest glory of God through the 
office. 

2. The bishops elect have as perfect a right to ordi- 
nation as the elders elect or the deacons elect to ordi- 
nation from the bishop. The orders of the bishop 
were obtained from the ordination by Mr. Wesley. He 
was the founder, the spiritual archbishop, the epochal 
man at the epochal period, by whom the ordination was 
conferred. That ordination he held to confer the right 
of ordaining men empowered thereby to administer the 
sacraments. The office conferred on Coke had all the 
attributes we can ascribe to an order; namely, ordina- 
tion, exclusive right to ordain, life-tenure, and succes- 
sional permanence in the future. To the day of his 
death Mr. Wesley preached to his preachers in England 
that they were not presbyters, but only evangelists; 
that for them to assume the priestly office and admin- 
ister the sacraments without ordination was to commit 



Methodist Episcopacy. 



161 



the sin of Korah. Yet he did believe that his was the 
providential endowment to ordain a bishop for America 
according to the practice of the primitive Church. 
And when the proper ordination of bishop was per- 
formed, Coke was as true a bishop as if he had been 
ordained by the Archbishop of Canterbury. And it 
was just the same episcopate constituted by Wesley, 
with the same nature and tenure, whether of office or 
order, that our General Conference incorporated into 
our system. And our fundamental enactment, that that 
episcopate cannot be diocesanized without the vote of 
the Annual Conferences, assumes an equal permanence 
of the same, in essence and tenure, in our constitution. 

3. It seems to us a very peculiar opinion which holds 
that ordination is an insignificant matter — an opinion 
at variance not only with the opinion of the universal 
Church, and with the universal opinion hitherto of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, but even at variance with 
the New Testament. How earnestly did Paul enjoin 
Timothy to lay hands suddenly on no man! We do not 
say that a Church or ministry cannot exist without 
ordination, but we do say that such a Church or min- 
istry is formally defective, and that its neglect or re- 
pudiation of a divinely sanctioned though not divinely 
enjoined institute must be condemned by the Christian 
conscience. Whenever under the approbation of the 
great Head of the Church the foundations of a new 
Church are laid, and its structure reared, ordination is 
the divinely sanctioned mode of authorization for the 
ministry of the word and the sacraments. And though 
a Church may shape itself into such form as is provi- 
dentially best adapted to effect its true purposes, and 
though other forms of Church government are doubt- 
less permissible, yet we believe episcopacy to be apos- 
tolically sanctioned, though not enjoined, and primarily 
11 * 



162 



Essays, Revieavs, and Discourses. 



the best form of government for the most efficient 
evangelical action. And when a Church with the three 
ranks is established, it is the presumptive fact, sanc- 
tioned by the New Testament and by all history, that 
the three ordinations alike confer a life-tenure. 

4. It is held by many in our Church that the elder- 
ship and deaconship are orders, while the bishopric is 
only an office. And we have not long since seen it 
stated, even in some of our official papers, that we are 
in fact Presbyterians. The ablest of American Meth- 
odist theologians, however, Dr. Wilbur Fisk, entirely 
repudiated that view. Such a position involves us in 
the most inextricable contradictions. Are not our 
bishops consecrated by the most solemn of the three 
ordinations? How can there be an ordination if not to 
an order? In the form of bestowing the three trusts, 
professedly under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, is 
there any intimation that one is less an order than the 
other ? Surely we are not after all the Methodist Pres- 
byterian Church, or the Methodist Congregational 
Church, but, if we mistake not, we are truly the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church. 

The writer of these lines claims that the Church be- 
stowed upon him a life-long eldership, unless forfeited 
by his own act. The Church professed to confer that 
permanent right upon him by the authority of God 
and under the guidance of the Holy Ghost. What 
moral right has she to either falsify her profession, or 
to break her compact and degrade her dutiful elder? 
But she has in the same way, and with still more solemn 
act, conferred what all understood to be a life-long 
bishopric upon our present living bishops. What right 
has she to revoke it? We deeply doubt whether there 
is the rightful power in the Church to quadrennialize 
the tenure of the present existing incumbents. 



Methodist Episcopacy. 



163 



5. It was entirely in the power of the American 
Church, without denying the validity of his ordination, 
to accept or reject Bishop Coke. Or they could take 
him for a year, or for a term of years, without affecting 
his ordinate rank. But after they have incorporated 
the ordained rank or office into the system of the 
Church, and have resolved themselves into the Method- 
ist Episcopal Church, that ordained rank has the same 
tenure as the two other ordained ranks — the eldership 
and the deaconship. The ordination is equally claim- 
able by the elect, is equally indelible, and requires an 
equal authority to abolish. The individual bishop, 
elder, or deacon may, indeed, be judicially dealt with, 
suspended, degraded, or expelled. He may, like Coke, 
be allowed leave of absence, or, like Hamlin e, to resign; 
but if either return to duty no re-ordination would be 
required. He may, like Andrew, suffer suspension of 
function for unacceptability. The form, not the es- 
sence, of the ordination may be modified. But none of 
these things can the General Conference do for the 
puepose of impairing the constitutional episcopate it- 
self, or subtracting any of the elements of an order 
above enumerated as included by Wesley. And any 
sweeping act by which these three co-ordinate grades 
(or either of them) can be at once organically quadren- 
malized so as periodically to ungown us all, requires a 
power behind the General Conference greater than the 
General Conference itself. 

6. We have thus far argued as to the powers of the 
General Conference to quadrennialize the episcopate. 
We do not think that the office or order is so purely at 
the mercy of any one jaunty majority that may happen 
to happen. It will require at least the rounds of the 
Annual Conferences. But the desirableness of the 
change either from Scripture sanction or sacred expe- 



164 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



diency is tbe reverse of probable. We believe our 
episcopal officers to be as genuine scriptural bishops, 
and as true an order, as Christendom can present. We 
believe that our present Church organization, just as it 
is, vindicates its superior claims for success above any- 
thing in Protestantism. We believe that in imparting 
to our Church conservation, unity, elasticity of action, 
and structural impressiveness upon the public mind, our 
untouched episcopacy secures a large share of that suc- 
cess. The full power of these points is largely attained 
by the prestige, and even the irresponsibility, secured 
by the life-tenure. The need of all these points is en- 
hanced by the introduction of lay representation. 
The unifying power of a genuine episcopacy over the 
two forces, lay and clerical, securing a proper balance 
in the Church for the ministry, is of prime importance. 

7. The quadrennializing of the episcopate at once de- 
grades it from being an order, and enfeebles it in all 
those points which give it value. For then, of course, 
the episcopal ordination should be abolished. And 
then we should re-christen ourselves the Methodist 
Presbyterian Church. And if then the full torrent of 
radicalism sets strong and sweeping, we shall, within a 
quadrennium or two further, have to re-re-christen our- 
selves the Methodist Congregational Church. But as 
the Congregationalists maintain n reverent observance 
of ordination, w r e may ultimately re-re- re-christen our- 
selves the Methodist Quaker Church. Now, perhaps, we 
are personally growing fogy and fossil; for we have a 
pretty extended range of deep and hallowed recollec- 
tions binding us in heart to the Church of our morning, 
our meridian, and our ripening afternoon. It was the 
Methodist Episcopal Church that rocked our cradle; 
and we trust it may be the Methodist Episcopal Church 
that will consecrate our hearse. 



Methodist Episcopacy. 



165 



The Wesleyan Axiom of no Prescribed Form of Church Govern- 
ment. 

If you would teach your son to reason, said Locke, 
let him study Chillingworth. So if the Church would 
teach her sons both to reason well and to defend her 
institutes, let them study John Emory. We do not 
wonder that before his clear, manly, exhaustive logic 
the followers of Alexander McCaine dissipated like a 
belated frost before the clear sun of a May morning. 
We need little more, perhaps, than John Emory and 
the History of our Disci/dine, by Robert Emory, for 
the refutation of our good and able brethren, who, 
without the disloyalty of Alexander McCaine, are mak- 
ing a movement upon our episcopacy with analogous 
arguments. 

We hold that the restrictive rule declares that a 
General Conference majority alone "shall not do away 
episcopacy;" that is, shall not do it away in whole 
or in any essential part; and in that episcopacy, as re- 
ceived from Mr. W r esley by the framers of that rule, 
ordination and life-tenure are essential and constit- 
uent parts. To remove them is, therefore, " to do away 
episcopacy " in the sense of the framers of the rule. 

Our business is to show what was the episcopal idea 
framed by Mr. Wesley, accepted by our fathers, and 
deposited in the restrictive rule. 

The broad principle upon which our system is built 
is the inherent right of every Church to shape its gov- 
ernment for the highest good to man and glory to God. 
This may properly be called, as it is by Dr. Reid, " the 
optional theory." The fundamental axiom of Wesley 
is found in the following words: " I still believe the 
episcopal form of Church government to agree with the 
writings of the apostles; but that it is prescribed in 



166 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



Scripture I do not believe. This, which I once zeal- 
ously espoused, I have been heartly ashamed of ever 
since I read Bishop Stillingfleefs Jrenicon. I think 
that he has unanswerably proved that neither Christ 
nor his Apostles prescribe any particular form of 
Church government." Our capitals signalize what 
we call the Wesleyan axiom. From this we deduce the 
resistless inference that they no more prescribe tico 
orders than three. And we may add, of course they no 
more prescribe three orders than five. 

This broad Wesleyan basal principle, or axiom, we 
have affirmed in the following explicit words: "Though 
a Church may shape itself into such form as is 
providentially best adapted to effect its true 
purposes, and though other forms of Church govern- 
ment are doubtless permitted, yet we believe episcopacy 
to be apostolically sanctioned, though not enjoined, and 
primarily the best form of government for the most 
efficient evangelical action." Such is " the prelacy," (!) 
forsooth, for which we are reproached. 

Confirmatory of all this, Dr. Emory, through sixteen 
pages of his Defense of Our Fathers, quotes from 
Stillingfleet a variety of pertinent passages; passages 
by which Wesley's mind was influenced as every candid 
mind must be influenced. Primarily (according to 
these extracts) even in England the reason for adopting 
episcopacy was not any " pretense of divine right, but 
the conveniency of this form of Church government to 
the state and condition of the Church at the time of its 
reformation." Archbishop Whitgift was the first who 
solemnly vindicated hierarchy; yet even he asserts that 
" no kind of government is expressed in the word, or 
can necessarily be concluded from thence;" and again, 
"no form of Church government is by the Scriptures 
prescribed to or commanded the Church of God." Of 



Methodist Episcopacy. 



167 



course, then, we again infer there are by divine pre- 
scription no more two orders than three, or three than 
two. Chemnitius, indeed, is approvingly quoted as 
affirming that " the word of God nowhere commands 
what or how many degrees and orders of ministers 
there shall be; and that in the Apostles' times there 
was not the like number in all the Churches." Such is 
the basal doctrine of our Church polity. 

Bishops and Elders Essentially one Order. 

To all this the able editor of the Canada Christian 
Guardian replies, that Mr. Wesley "vindicated" our 
episcopacy on the fact that episcopate and eldership 
are one order. One order, we reply, by New Testa- 
ment example, and even somewhat in the post-apostolic 
Church, but not one by divine prescription for the 
Church of all time. The thoughtful editor has chosen 
precisely the right word, " vindicated." Mr. Wesley 
"vindicated" his ordination by this statement, but 
based it on the broad " optional " axiom. He vindi- 
cated himself against the clamors of high-churchmen 
on the established fact that in the New Testament the 
episcopos and the presbuteros were one. It was a 
shield ; an argumentum ad homines, accomplishing its 
defensive purpose. The axiom, that no limitation is 
* divinely laid down to either two or three orders, under- 
lay this vindication. That axiom Mr. Wesley never 
forgot. He expressly tells us that he was ashamed of 
maintaining any other doctrine ever since he had read 
Stillingfleet. It must, therefore, be assumed, on his own 
authority, as permanently underlying all his subsequent 
utterances and movements. 

Mr. Tyerman, in his Life and Times of John 'Wesley, 
brings before us some important and decisive facts 
touching the pending discussion on Mr. Wesley's views 



168 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



of episcopacy as an " order " after his reading of Lord 
King's Inquiry, and consequently his views of the 
episcopate he founded in America. 

Mr. Wesley read Lord King's treatise in the year 
1746, and thus recorded his consequent conclusions: 
"In spite of the vehement prejudice of my education, 
I was ready to believe that this was a fair and impar- 
tial draft ; but, if so, it would follow that bishops and 

PRESBYTERS ARE ESSENTIALLY OF ONE ORDER, and that 

originally every Christian congregation was a Church 
independent of all others." 

Consequent upon this, Mr. Wesley's Conference in 
the next year, 1747, records his opinion on the same 
subject in the following questions and answers : 

" Q. Are the three orders, of bishops, priests, 
and deacons, plainly described in the New Testa- 
ment ? 

"A. We think they are, and believe they gener- 
ally obtained in the Churches of the apostolic age. 

"Q. But are you assured that God designed the 
same plan should obtain in all Churches in all ages? 

"A. We are not assured of this, because we do not 
know it is asserted in Holy Writ. 

" Q. If this plan were essential to a Christian Church, 
what must become of all the foreign reformed 
Churches ? 

"A. It would follow that they are no parts of the 
Church of Christ ! A consequence full of shocking 
absurdity. 

" Q. Must there not be numberless accidental varieties 
in the government of various Churches? 

"A. There must, in the nature of things; for, as God 
variously dispenses his gifts of nature, providence, and 
grace, both the offices themselves and the officers of each 
ought to be varied from time to time. 



Methodist Episcopacy, 169 

"Q. Why is it there is no determinate plan of Church 
government appointed in Scripture ? 

"A. Without doubt, because the wisdom of God had 
a regard to this necessary variety." 

These records are conclusive. They prove that, in 
consequence of reading Lord King, Mr. Wesley em- 
braced and held as harmonious in his mind these two 
positions: "Bishops and presbyters are essentially of 
o^e okdee," and " the three orders of bishops, priests, 
and deacons are plainly described in the New Testa- 
ment, and they generally obtained in the apostolic age." 
He held them both as consistent parts of his theory of 
Church government. In one aspect he held that bishops 
and elders are one order; in another he held they were 
two. He held, therefore, that an ordained episcopate is 
cm order. 

Let us, therefore, present the following harmony of 
early opinions : 

1746-47. "Bishops and presby- 1747. "The three orders of 
ters are essentially of one order. 1 ' bishops, priests, and deacons, are 
— Wesley. described in the New Testament," 

and "generally obtained in the 
Apostolic Chnrch." — Wesley and 
his British Conference. 
1784. "Lord King's account of 1789. "Wesley ... set apart 
the primitive Church convinced . . . Thomas Coke . . having de- 
me many years ago that bishops livered to him letters of episcopal 
axd presbyters are the same orders." The General Confer- 
order.'' — Wesley's Letter to the ence . . . did unanimously receive 
American Conference. the said T. C. and F. A. as their 

bishops, being satisfied of the va- 
lidity of their episcopal ordina- 
tiox." — American General Confer- 
ence. 

"The form and manner of mak- 
ing and ordaining of superintend- 
ents, elders, and deacons." — 
Wesley's American Ritual. 

On this we may note that, if the maintenance of three 
orders (meaning thereby successionally ordained minis- 



170 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



terial grades, constitutionally established and constitu- 
tionally removable by the Church) is prelacy, then Mr. 
Wesley, both in 1747 and in 1784, was a prelatist; the 
British Conference and the American General Confer- 
ence were prelatists ; our Discipline, and therefore our 
ordinations, are prelatical; our episcopacy is a prelacy, 
our bishops are prelates, and our Church is prelatical. 
We are all " high-church," and always have been from 
our founders until now. 

The Significance of Orders. 

In regard to the proper nature of " orders," we have 
asked, "How can there be an ordination if not to an 
order?" This question embraces an entire argument. 
The old verbs to ordain and to order were different 
forms of the same word, used in the ritual of the An- 
glican Church, of which Wesley was a presbyter. To 
order signifies to endow with orders, just as to magnet- 
ize signifies to endow with magnetism. And so Web- 
ster rightly defines " ordination, in the Episcopal 
Church, the act of conferring holy orders or sacerdotal 
power; called also consecration." And so the old 
Thirty-sixth Article of the Anglican Church says, 
"The Book of Consecration . . . doth contain all 
things necessary for such consecration or ordering. 
And, therefore, whosoever are consecrated or ordered 
according to the rites of that book . . . we decree all 
such to be rightly . . . consecrated or ordered." The 
word had this import because to the mind of the 
Church the thing had this nature. Ordination was the 
mode and test of an order. As an Anglican Church- 
man Mr. Wesley's mind was shaped to the assumption 
that a valid ordination always conferred valid orders. 
Although the word order is an ecclesiastical rather than 
a scriptural term, and is of very flexible import, yet 



Methodist Episcopacy. 



171 



the best definition we can give it would be thus : 
Order is a rank of ministry constituted by election and 
ordination, permanently and successionally continued 
in a Church. Our episcopate would thus be an order. 

Wesley's Idea of Three Orders. 

ISTor does the fact that Mr. Wesley assumed the 
primitive oneness of the episcopos and the presbuteros 
at all preclude the further fact that when, an episcopos 
is set apart by ordination, and is made, by the same 
customary life-tenure as belongs to the eldership, the 
executive performer of all future constitutionally valid 
ordinations, there is thereby a new "order" properly 
inaugurated, and the two primary orders become a trip- 
licate. In one aspect there are two, in the other three. 
We do not think this is quite rightly expressed by say- 
ing, with Watson and others, that there are two orders 
and an office. For then we should find this anomaly 
in our system, that there is an immensely larger differ- 
ence of power between our order and office than be- 
tween our two orders! And, second, the Wesleyan 
axiom precludes our holding the two lower grades with 
any more a divinely appointed order than the other. 
Viewed, however, as primitively and permanently pos- 
sessing in itself inherently the constitutive and ordain- 
ing power, the eldership does embrace the episcopate 
in itself as a unit, and there exist but the two orders, 
the eldership and the deaconship. In the eldership it 
inheres to supplement all breaks in the episcopal suc- 
cession, by inaugurating the line anew. Whether the 
break occur by death, or by an apostasy on the part of 
the episcopal body, requiring a secession of the pious 
from its authority, in the eldership it lies to reconstruct 
the episcopate anew. Viewed, then, as an ordained, 
life-tenured institute, divinely sanctioned though not 



172 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



absolutely prescribed, the episcopate is a new order, 
and the entire orders are three. For all the purposes 
of our present showing, the incapacity of a General 
Conference majority to remove the life-tenured ordina- 
tion of our bishops, we shall show that by our consti- 
tutional documents there are three orders. 

The eldership is by scriptural precedent and by the 
natural course of things, as embodying the mass of the 
mature ministry, the main body and trunk of the minis- 
terial strength and power. As such it is naturally and 
crudely the undeveloped one order. Just as, naturally 
and by sacred precedent and expediency, it reserves the 
diaconate order as its preparatory pupilage, so it flowers 
up into the episcopacy as its concentrated representative 
order. Fundamentally, there may thus be one order; 
subsidiarily, a second order; and derivatively, yet 
superior in function, a third order. The ordership and 
organic permanence is constituted in all three cases, ac- 
cording to sacred precedent, by ordination. The high- 
est of the three orders is especially, as it happens, per- 
petuated by a series of ordaining hands, passing from 
predecessor to successor, bishop authenticating bishop, 
as elder does not authenticate elder, or deacon, deacon. 
Hence, though, as derivative, it is in origin less an 
order, and an inferior order, yet, as constituted, it be- 
comes more distinctively an order than either of the 
other two. The New Testament furnishes, indeed, no 
decisive precedent of an ordained and permanently 
fixed super-presbyterial order; but it does furnish 
classes and instances of men exercising super-presby- 
terial authority, so that pure and perfect parity of office 
is not divinely enjoined. Such classes and cases are 
the apostles, perhaps the evangelists, St. James of 
Jerusalem, and Timothy and Titus. For the perma- 
nent organization of a Church, then, the three orders, 



Methodist Episcopacy. 



173 



though not divinely enjoined, are divinely authenti- 
cated. 

Wesley held that the episcopate and eldership were 
so one order that the power constituting an episcopal 
order inhered in the eldership; but he did not believe 
that there lay in the eldership a right to exercise that 
power without a true providential and divine call. 
Thus he said, in a letter to Rev. Thomas Adam, 1755: 
" It is not clear to us that presbyters so circumstanced as 
we are may appoint or ordain others; but it is that we 
may direct, as well as suffer them to do what we con- 
ceive they are moved to by the Holy Ghost." Hence, 
in his episcopal diploma given to Coke, he announces, 
" I, John Wesley, think myself providentially called at 
this time to set apart," etc. " And, therefore, under the 
protection of Almighty God I have this day set apart," 
etc. And Coke, in assenting beforehand to receive 
" the power of ordaining others " (that is, an exclusive 
super-presbyterial or episcopal power), declares in 
regard to Wesley's right to confer such power, " I have 
not a shadow of doubt but God hath invested you with, 
for the good of our connection," etc. Emory spends 
seven pages (38-45) in proving against McCaine that 
this was an intentional and a valid episcopal ordination. 
He bases it largely on Wesley's divine call as " father" 
and founder to act as "spiritual archbishop." "Mr. 
Wesley," says Emory, " did himself assert that he be- 
lieved himself to be ' a scriptural episcopos as much as 
any man in England or in Europe.' And he asserted 
this with direct reference to his ' acting as a bishop,'' in 
reply to the remarks of his brother Charles. If by 
episcopos he did not mean to aver himself a bishop in 
fact, and entitled to ' act as a bishop,' in our acceptation 
of the term, then his reply did not meet his brother's 
objection." (P. 44.) On three grounds, then, Mr. 



174: 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



Wesley was "a spiritual archbishop." First, he was a 
presbyter of the Church, a rank in which the primordial 
power inheres of conferring orders. Second, this pres- 
byterial rank would not constitute a right to ordain 
without a divine providential call, and that call actually 
existing was the second ground. Third, a people, also 
called providentially, with a great future before it, 
needed, waited for, and was ready to accept this ordi- 
nation and its threefold orders as the fundamental form 
of its Church. And thus by this conjoint action and 
composite act of founder, ministry, and people, we re- 
peat, in the face of all the reclamations which our 
affirmation has encountered, there iocs created as true 
an episcopacy as has ever existed in the Christian 
Church. 

"Wesley Intended Coke's Ordination. 

Mr. Tyerman denies that Wesley really intended his 
authentication of Coke to be an ordination of him as 
American bishop. But Coke could not have been mis- 
taken as to whether it was fin ordination or not. 
There is no alternative. Either it was an ordination or 
Coke was guilty of a falsehood of a most atrocious 
character. He most unequivocally lied, and sacrile- 
giously lied, and deliberately carried the lie across the 
ocean. And when he came to America with that lie 
in his mouth he put into the mouth of our American 
Conference the statement that Wesley had sent him 
with " letters of episcopal orders," which was, if Mr. 
Tyerman be correct, a most stupendous lie. And, then, 
when Coke, falsely pretending to be bishop, proceeded 
to ordain Asbury to the same grade, all united to em- 
body the lie in external action — a sacrilegious cheat! 
This was the very ground, maintained by the very 
same arguments, assumed by McCaine to show that our 



Mlthodist Episcopacy. 175 

# 

episcopacy originated in fraud and should be abandoned 
by all honest men. John Pawson was, perhaps, as close 
in Mr. Wesley's counsels as any man; and we are 
obliged to Mr. Tyennan for the only valuable contri- 
bution he has furnished to this subject in the following 
words left in a manuscript by Pawson. "He" (Wes- 
ley) " foresaw that the Methodists would soon become 
a distinct body. He was deeply prejudiced against 
presbyterian, and as much in favor of episcopal, govern- 
ment. In order, therefore, to preserve all that is valu- 
able in the Church of England among the Methodists, 
he ordained Mr. Mather and Dr. Coke bis/tops. These 
he undoubtedly designed should ordain others. Mr. 
Mather told us so at the Manchester Conference, in 
1791. I believe Mr. Wesley's thought of ordaining 
arose out of the Bishop of London refusing to ordain a 
preacher for America." On this we remark: 1. When 
Mr. Tyerman has disposed of Coke as unreliable, his 
work is not half done, for he has still the unimpeach- 
able Mather to deal with. Mr. Wesley entertaining 
the expectation that the Methodist preachers, in spite 
of all his efforts, would leave the Church, and would 
administer the sacraments after his death, ordained 
Mather a bishop for England in order that it might be 
authoritatively done. For, 2. When Mr. Wesley said, 
" I am as scriptural an episcopos as there is in all 
England," he meant, as Dr. Emory rightly argues, 
more than that he was as good an elder as any body; 
which would have been nothing to his purpose. He 
meant that by a divine call he had (not only the elders' 
ecclesiastical power to ordain elders, but that he had) 
the providential right to ordain even bishops. The 
ecclesiastical inherent power of an elder to ordain does 
not make it right for every elder to exercise the power 
at his caprice. The elders of the Methodist Episcopal 



176 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 

Church claim the ordaining power, but none would 
deny a free exercise of the power to be disorderly, and 
even wicked. Mr. Wesley claimed that for his unor- 
dained ministers to administer the sacraments would be 
the sin of Korah; and yet he believed that a bishop 
ordained by him could have empowered them, by ordi- 
nation and due churchly organization, to administer the 
sacraments with perfect rectitude. He believed him- 
self to be "the spiritual archbishop" of his people, 
having spiritual powers and rights which no ot/ier elder 
in England had. And we concur with him. 3. That 
Wesley " ordained " Coke (that is, ordained him with 
episcopal orders), is certain from the fact that he sent a 
liturgy to America with the due forms for " ordaining " 
the three orders of superintendent, elder, and deacon. 
The forms were all, with slight modifications, the ordi- 
nation forms of the Anglican Church, as we have essen- 
tially retained them to this day. This demonstrates 
with what form Wesley ordained Coke; for certainly 
he would not have given Coke a more authoritative 
form for others than he used himself. One sentence, 
therefore, refutes Mr. Tyerman forever: Wesley em- 
powered Coke to " ordain " successors, therefore he him- 
self "ordained" Coke. In the ordination of Coke, 
Wesley intended to initiate an ordained super-presby- 
terial successional line for all futurity. 4. Let the 
reader measure the real pow r er received by Coke from 
Wesley, and see whether it was less than an episcopate. 
There was, first, an ordination conferred ; second, a 
power bestowed, with a printed form prescribed, to 
ordain a successor, Asbury being the well-known man 
intended. Next, his successors were to possess, nor- 
mally, the exclusive executive right of ordaining men to 
administer those sacraments for which the people had 
so long waited in vain. And last, this was to be a per- 



Methodist Episcopacy. 



177 



manent successional constitution, established for the 
long future, because Wesley and our Methodism pre- 
ferred the episcopal form of government. This ordina- 
tion, together with the American election, gave Coke 
and Asbury jurisdiction over the Methodism of all 
America. Now, here were, (1.) Ordination; (2.) Ex- 
clusive right to ordain ; (3.) Power to set agoing a line 
of ordained successors of same grade; (4.) Intentional 
organic permanence as a Church with three ordained 
grades; (5.) Ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the entire 
continent. If this was not an episcopate, what on earth 
could be an episcopate? (6.) This Church was to be 
called the Methodist Episcopal Church. For, even if 
true that Coke and Asbury were not called bishops 
until five years after Coke's ordination, yet the Church 
was called episcoj)al immediately, and with Mr. Wes- 
ley's concurrence. But how can there be an episcopal 
Church without a bishop ? How is the bishop any less 
a bishop because he is to be called by a Latin rather 
than a Greek title ? It might, as Emory justly argues, 
be just as truly inferred that the second grade were 
not to be presbyters because they are called elders. 

Wesley's Purpose of a Methodist Episcopal Church in England. 

It was American Methodism wmich first brought out 
Mr. Wesley's purposed construction of his societies into 
a Church. Here as elsewhere he acted upon the sug- 
gestions of Providence. He waited four years before 
he obeyed the unanimous request of the American 
Methodists to give them an episcopal churchdom. Its 
form appears in the Sunday Service he sent to America. 
Two years later he prescribed the same episcopal church- 
form for all the " Methodists in His Majesty's Domin- 
ions. 1 '' How false is the talk that Mr. Wesley regretted 
the ordination of Coke ! So far from regretting his 
12 



178 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



establishing an episcopacy in America, he proceeded 
with a firm and steady step to prescribe the same epis- 
copacy for England. For that purpose he proceeded 
to ordain Mather as an English Methodist bishop under 
the name of superintendent, and the issue from his 
hand of the same "Service,"* with its threefold ordi- 
nations, of three grades of ministers, is conclusive proof 
that he intended those ordinations to be perpetuated, 
and the universal establishment forever of one Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church. Had his purpose been com- 
pletely accomplished our coming Ecumenical Confer- 
ence would have been the assemblage of a purely 
episcopal body of Churches. As it is, we shall have a 
truly Methodistic, but not perfectly Wesleyan, assem- 
blage. The several American Episcopal Methodisms 
are alone in form completely Wesleyan Churches. 

* The title-pages of these volumes are as follows: The Sunday 
Service of the Methodists in North America; with other Occasional 
Services. London: Printed in the year MDCCLXXXIV". 

The Sunday Service of the Methodists in His Majestifs Dominions ; 
with other Occasional Services. London: Printed by Frys & Couch- 
man, Worship Street, Upper Moorsfleld. 1786. 

The two volumes bear the same date, " Bristol, September 9, 
1784." They contain the same liturgv, with the forms for ordaining 
the three orders of superintendents, elders, and deacons. There ap- 
pear but two differences: First, in the title-page. The former book was 
printed in London and sent by Dr. Coke to the Christmas Conference 
for tbe American Methodists ; the latter two years later, for the 
British Methodists universally. Second, the American book contains 
only Wesley's twenty-four Articles. The article entitled "Of the 
Rulers of the United States of America," adopted at that Conference, 
was inserted in a later edition. The British book contains Wesley's 
twenty-four, with a twenty-fifth corresponding to the American, en- 
titled "Of the Rulers of the British Dominions in America." They 
are two editions of the same book. — Eds. 



Methodist Episcopacy. 



179 



Our Theory and Practice Consistent. 

These views, we trust, show a perfect consistency be- 
tween our Church theory and our episcopal ordinations. 
Within a few months past, indeed, the notion has 
come into a simultaneous currency among our Method- 
ist periodicals, from Toronto through Cincinnati down 
to Pittsburg, that there is a yawning contradiction 
through our whole history between our ecclesiastical 
doctrine and our episcopal ordination. This is said, 
apparently, to prepare the way for the abolition of that 
ordination. Already, as the North-western sadly tells 
us, there are plenty of very wise ones who flout 
that ordination as a "farce." The Pittsburg says, 
" The practice of the Church," that is, ordination, 
"supports Dr. Whedon, the theory condemns him." 
The Western thinks there is a " contradiction," with 
which " we have got along very well," " provided we 
have the courage to acknowledge it." If there be such 
a contradiction, it is certainly a very serious one. Of 
the two sides of a contradiction one side must be false ; 
and here, it seems, the falsehood lies in the ordination. 
So th at we have a streak of falsehood in our system, 
running from John Wesley to the present hour! Mr. 
Wesley was the author of it in the ordination of Coke! 
And all the sapient editor of the Quarterly is doing, is 
to stop up this yawning crack with a little of his logical 
putty. Now a falsehood so willfully and clearly per- 
sisted in must be a lie; and a lie solemnly invoking, as 
our ordination does, the presence and notice of Al- 
mighty God must be perjury ; and perjury flagrantly 
performed in a sacred rite must be nothing less than 
sacrilege. Surely, if our Church has carried this sac- 
rilegious lie in her right hand from her birth, we dis- 
agree with the notion that " we have got along very 



180 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



well." To abolish our episcopal ordination on the as- 
sumption of such a lie would be an insult to our whole 
history, a libel and a blot upon the whole scroll of our 
radiant saintship. 

These brethren, perhaps, defend our founders from 
the charge of conscious lying sacrilege by saying that 
those primitive men, Wesley, Coke, and Asbury, did 
not see the "contradiction!" So that wisdom will not 
only die with our talented young brethren, but was 
born with them, and never was born until they were 
born. Our ancestors are graciously saved from being 
made liars by being made simpletons! And it takes the 
new-born prodigies of our present day to "acknowl- 
edge" what fools they were! May we not gently sug- 
ge>t that these courageous imputations are "at variance 
with all we have gathered from standard writers and 
the history of the Church? " Where have they assured 
us that they contradicted themselves ? What proof is 
there that they held the doctrine that they were guilty 
of a contradiction which they had not intellect enough 
to perceive ? May we not hint, too, that a " law " 
ought to be passed padlocking the lips that thus emu- 
late the O'Kellys and the McCaines of former days in 
calumniating " our fathers?" Were these imputations 
upon our Church and founders made by outside assail- 
ants, would not the impulsive loyalty of these brethren 
lay quick hands upon their controversial weapons to 
repel the bigoted slander? Do these courageous and 
perspicacious brethren imagine that "our fathers," 
possessing, perhaps, as keen intellects as their succes- 
sors, were not well trained by the demands of the hour 
to this very discussion ? Do they suppose that this 
pretense of a " contradiction " was not encountered 
from enemies and false brethren, perfectly understood, 
and fully provided against? Let us hear John Emory: 



Methodist Episcopacy. 



181 



"In whatever sense distinct ordinations constitute 
distinct orders, in the same sense Mr. Wesley certainly 
intended that we should have three orders; for he un- 
deniably instituted three distinct ordinations. All the 
forms and solemnities requisite for the constituting of 
any one order, in this sense were equally prepared and 
recommended by him to us for the constituting of three 
orders. The term " ordain " is derived from the Latin 
ordino, to order, create, or commission one to be a 
public officer — and this from ordo, order. And hence 
persons ordained are said to be persons in "holy 
orders." * 

This is in reality just what we maintain, that the 
word " order" has no precise inflexibility, and that, in 
a proper sense, the very sense needed for our argument, 
there is a true order just where there is a true ordina- 
tion. " How can there be an ordination," we asked, 
" if not to an order? " So far, then, from a " variance " 
from our standards we do but repeat them. Humbly 
and proudly we say it, we are standing just in the 
tracks of John Emory, and refuting like assaults with 
like argument. 

Dr. Bangs calls the third an " order," though not a 
divinely appointed order. But the difficulty for him 
is, that by the Wesleyan axiom of optionalism the other 
two are no more divinely appointed than the third. 
They are all thereby orders, or neither. He wrote a 
book maintaining that the evangelists were a New Tes- 
tament super-presbyterial " order" and a precedent for 
our episcopate. He also wrote an article for Buck's 
Dictionary, saying that Methodists had three orders of 
ministry. For this — so history repeals itself — he was 
assailed for " prelacy " and " high-churchism," and he 
published in Emory's Defense his reply, containing the 
* Emory's Defense, p. 63. 



182 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



following passage: " I consider it a simple statement 
of a matter of fact that the Methodist Episcopal 
Church acknowledges three orders of ministers — deacons 
elders, and bishops; which fact certainly no one can 
contradict, still understanding the word order when ap- 
plied to bishops, as above defined ; " that is, as defined 
in application to evangelists. "If any choose to say 
that we acknowledge two orders only, and a superior 
minister possessing delegated jurisdiction chiefly of an 
executive character, he has my full consent. I will not 
dispute about words."* Similarly, Emory, in his 
Episcopal Controversy Reviewed (p. 47), says: "The 
Methodist Episcopal polity recognizes both an order of 
bishops officially superior to presbyters, and the order 
of deacons." 

Wesley's Idea Framed into the Eestrictive Rule. 

Thus far we have discussed Wesley's idea of his 
episcopacy; we shall next show that that idea was, by 
the authors of our restrictive rule, so framed into that 
rule as not to be diminished, in part or in whole, with- 
out the three fourths concurrent vote of our Annual 
Conferences. Let now our readers, with us, take our 
little book of Discipline and open to its very first sec- 
tion, entitled " Origin of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church." This section, separately, is a very primitive 
document, framed by the fathers who received the 
episcopate from Wesley, in 1785, and was handed down 
through the framers of the restrictive rule to our 
General Conference of 1872. Whatever idea it fur- 

* " It will be perceived that we have all along recognized three 
orders in the ministry — deacons, elders or presbyters, and superin- 
tendents or bishops — without, however, supposing that the third 
order in the ministry is essential to the existence and vitality of the 
Church." — Bangs's Original Church of Christ p. 304. This we hold to 
be the true ground ; not that we have two orders and an office. 



Methodist Episcopacy. 



183 



nishes of our episcopacy as named in the restrictive 
rule is, therefore, the true idea. For it is the idea — 
sense and meaning — of the framers of a document which 
remains its true idea forever. This authoritative docu- 
ment tells us, among other things, that Wesley, "pre- 
ferring the episcopal mode of church government to any 
other " (so that it was a purely " optional " form, no or- 
ders, more or less, being divinely prescribed), " set apart 
. . . Thomas Coke . . .for the episcopal office" (so that 
here the episcopate is an office) ; " and having delivered . to 
him letters of episcopal orders " (so that this office is, 
also, orders, the words being used interchangeably), 
Mr. Wesley " commissioned and directed Jam to set 
apart Francis Asbury . . .for the same episcopal office ; " 
so that both Mr. Wesley and our Discipline assume that 
exclusive executive right to ordain was normally to be 
reserved to these episcopally ordained bishops and their 
episcopally ordained successors; the successional prin- 
ciple being thus recognized both by Wesley and by us. 
Finally, "the General Conference . . . did unanimously re- 
ceive the said Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury as their 
bishops, being fully satisfied of the validity of thetr 
episcopal ordination. 1 ' Here is the clincher. In the 
episcopacy — that is, " episcopal orders " received by our 
General Conference from Mr. Wesley- — " validity of 
ordination" was one of the things in which they re- 
quired to be " satisfied." " Ordination," therefore, and 
" valid ordination," was one of the essentials in this 
episcopal order. Now it was these same men who en- 
shrined the same episcopate (of which valid ordination 
was an essential) in our restrictive rules, and required 
that no mere majority of the General Conference should 
"do away episcopacy." But, surely, to do away an 
essential constituent of a thing is to do away the thing. 
If you can do away one essential you can another; and 



184 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



there is just the same right to do away all, one by one 
or altogether, as to do away one alone. 

And in their expressive Saxon our fathers do not say 
abolish, as by a single complete act, but do away, as 
by a series of partial acts, wearing off by degrees, or 
breaking off by piecemeal. If a mere majority can take 
away the ordination of the bishops, and not thereby do 
away episcopacy, it can in the same way take away the 
life-tenure. It can then take away the power to ordain. 
It can then take away the election by simply doing noth- 
ing. And thus a majority may take away every part and 
not " do away episcopacy." There is no other mode of pre- 
serving our Church constitution herein than to ascertain 
what were the constituents of the idea of episcopacy as 
held by the framers of the restrictive rule, and rigidly 
insist that nothing but the constitutional process shall 
abate one jot or tittle. And when we are told that the 
practice of the Church sustains our views, we submit 
whether that does not settle the whole question. For this 
" practice " is embodied in and is the expression of our 
fundamental law; law, in collision with which no 
"theory," no "standard writers," can for a moment 
stand, even as the weaker side of a " contradiction." 

The Office lias the Four Attributes of an Order. 

We said that " the office conferred on Coke had all 
the attributes we can ascribe to an order; namely, 
1. Ordination; 2. Exclusive right to ordain; 3. Life- 
tenure; and, 4. Saccessional permanence in the future." 
This we re-assert, and proceed, in addition to what has 
been said, to show. And, first, as to ordination, we re- 
mark: 1. Before Coke's ordination, Asbury, under title 
of general assistant, " had," as Coke and Asbury say, 
" exercised all the authority of a bishop excepting that 
of ordination." — Hist. Discipline, p. 336. For the want 



Methodist Episcopacy. 



185 



of ordination he was held as no bishop ; and, however 
inconveniently, no sacraments were to be allowed; 
which, by the way, demonstrates the second of the four 
attributes, namely, Exclusive right to ordain. It was 
by his ordination, then, that Asbury became a bishop 
and the sacraments became possible. By the idea of 
Wesley and our fathers, then, the ordination is an es- 
sential constituent of their episcopate. By the with- 
holding ordination our bishop is reduced from a bishop 
to a '''general assistant'' of the Asbury type previous 
to Wesley's ordaining act. By withholding ordina- 
tion you " do away episcopacy " as it is, at a single 
blow. So that we repeat that the bishop elect has the 
same right to ordination as the elder elect, and the 
General Conference has no right to withhold it. 2. By 
that ordaining act, and dependently upon it, our fathers 
assumed the title of Methodist Episcopal Church. 
Withdraw the ordination, and, according to their idea, 
we are no longer episcopal. Our very name is a dem- 
onstration of our argument. If we drop the ordination 
we have no historical right to retain the title. 3. We 
have already shown, by the very first section of our 
Discipline, that they held the episcopal office to be 
orders, and considered valid orders a condition to our 
valid episcopal churchdom. 4. Mr. Wesley sent them 
a liturgy containing, in his own words, " The Form and 
Manner of making* and Ordaining of Superintendents, 
elders, and deacons."' This " form M is the English 
form of ordaining a bishop, slightly modified, showing 
that under the name superintendent Mr. Wesley really, 
in his own idea, ordained Coke a bishop. 5. All our 
K standard writers " have, with one voice, maintained 

* Br the Wesley an idea (modified, we believe, before the adoption 
of the restrictive rule) the bishop was ''made," not by the election, 
but solely by the ordination. 



186 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



that Coke was a true bishop; that Wesley intentionally 
and validly ordained him, and that our episcopate is 
that very same Wesleyan episcopate, made by a valid 
ordination, and, as an episcopate valid by a valid ordi- 
nation, imbedded entire in our restrictive rule, not to 
be minified of its essentials save by the constitutional 
two thirds and three fourths majorities. 

And this was, by the Wesleyan idea, a life-tenured 
ordination and order. Where is the proof that Mr. 
Wesley held to a periodic episcopate? The burden 
rests with those who assert it. Wesley proposed to 
frame an ordained episcopate according to the pattern 
of the primitive Church. But where in all ecclesiastic- 
al history is there any instance of a periodical ordained 
episcopate ? If Wesley's episcopate is periodical, so is 
his eldership. His optional axiom sweeps both alike. 
If his "form" of threefold ordinations shows no pur- 
pose of a life-tenured episcopate, then it shows no life- 
tenured presbyterate. In all our episcopal elections, 
from the first quadrennial General Conference to the 
last, probably never a voter doubted that he was voting 
an ordaining, life-tenured episcopate, such being his 
actual intentio?i. So that a life-tenured episcopate has 
been unanimously voted by every General -Conference, 
and unanimously accepted by every Annual Conference. 
The life-tenure has thus all the permanence of unques- 
tioned law. This unanimity for a life-tenured episco- 
pate has been as perfect as the unanimity for a life" 
tenured eldership. And if a General Conference ma- 
jority may abolish one, it can abolish the other. Both 
life-tenures are on the same platform, and both stand 
or fall together. As to successional permanence, no one, 
we presume, will dispute that Mr. Wesley empowered 
Coke to ordain Asbury, as mentioned in the first section 
of our Discipline, in order, according to the practice of 



Methodist Episcopacy. 



187 



all episcopal Churches, to establish the successional 
method by ordination. This inference is necessary 
from the very fact that he held himself as giving, as 
our Methodism held herself as receiving, a permanent 
Church constitution. For this he gave the "form " for 
all the three successional orders alike. And here, 
again, the episcopate and presbyterate are in the same 
boat. "Mr. Wesley," say Coke and Asbury, "conse- 
crated one for the office of a bishop that our episcopacy 
might descend from himself.*' * 

And it would be well for our brethren who hold that 
we have two divinely established orders, to remember 
that the Wesleyan axiom of optionalism underlies 
them, and reflect whether the episcopate is not the true 
safeguard of the presbyterate P The episcopate has the 
intrenchment of the restrictive rule, but the preshyt- 
erate has not even that. All a General Conference has 
to do is to abolish its ordination from the Discipline. 
Leading minds among us bottom the whole ministry 
simply on the divine call, and hint about ordination 
being "a fetish v or "a farce." Leading minds among 
us hold, also, that there is, iu fact, no more special 
divine call for the ministry than for any other calling. 
We are told truly that a man is a minister before he is 
a presbyter, and it is equally true that a man is a 
Christian before he is baptized. But we reply, If there 
is a call to the ministry, there is also a divinely re- 
quired recognition of that call by the divinely ap- 
pointed Church of Christ. Divinely, if there be a min- 
istry there also is a Church. "In ordinary cases," says 
Wesley, " both an inward and an outward call are req- 
uisite." Baptism is the divinely required recognition 
of regeneration; ordination is the divinely authorized 

* As to the episcopacy, -which we may not do away, the power to 
ordain is essential to its being." — Hamlines Speech. 



188 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



form, in the absence of all others, justly binding on the 
conscience of the Church's recognition of a divinely 
called ministry. To hold firmly by the organism as 
the machinery for great religious results is Methodism; 
to sacrifice the machinery to pure spiritualism is 
Quakerism. 

Of this last of the above two classes of thinkers, 
some do manfully oppose the proposed innovation on 
the true ground, that the very object of a churchdom is 
to regulate these pure subjectivisms. They well under- 
stand that if our episcopacy be "done away," a jure 
clivino presbyterate will furnish no solid bottom. 
There is no solid bottom; all is a sea of unregulated 
subjectivity. Well, then, may our eldership query 
whether our intrenched episcopacy is not the best safe- 
guard for the presbyterate. 

If our argument has been sound and true, then for a 
General Conference majority to " do away " with either 
of the four elements of the episcopate named is a vio- 
lation of the constitution of the Church. It is a vio- 
lence done to our Wesleyan episcopacy, striking at our 
venerable founders of blessed memory, striking the 
person of the greatest religious reformer of modern 
times, John Wesley himself. It would be a usurpation 
over the rights of our Annual Conferences, by whose 
suffrage such a vote should be decided. It would be a 
usurpation over the rights of our three orders of minis- 
try, each of whom, episcopate, eldership, and deacon- 
ship, has a right to hold up its gown in defiance of the 
General Conference. 

Methodist Episcopacy neither Prelacy nor Presbyterianism. 

It is not really prelacy, but, as we shall show, episco- 
pacy, against which, from his Presbyterian stand-point, 
Dr. Nesbit raises his outcry. 1. Prelacy claims to 



Methodist Episcopacy. 



189 



root its three orders in the New Testament as the di- 
vinely appointed and exclusive form of Church govern- 
ment ; it asserts unbroken descent of its prelates from 
the apostles, denies all essential oneness of the two or 
three orders, and all power of the eldership to unfold or 
constitute an episcopate from itself. 2. Wesley's epis- 
copacy, assuming that the Scripture prescribes no one 
form of government, claims its three orders to be op- 
tional. This episcopacy exists only as it is framed by 
the free choice of the Church into her constitution, and 
it can be modified or abolished by the proper constitu- 
tional change, and some other form be justifiably insti- 
tuted. It admits that the episcopate and eldership, 
while essentially one order, are derivatively two. It 
claims no necessary descent from the apostles, however 
historically probable it may be that episcopacy was sanc- 
tioned and some bishops ordained by the latest living 
apostles. 3. Presbyteriaxish, like prelacy, claiming an 
exclusive divine prescription, but for two orders instead 
of three, pronounces all other functional positions to be 
offices. Feeling the anomaly that an office should really 
possess greater jurisdiction and superior power over 
the orders, and the still greater anomaly of its being 
inaugurated with the proper ritual of an order, namely, 
ordination, it seeks first to abolish its ordination, and 
then its jurisdiction and existence. 

Authorities Contradicting the Practice of the Church. 

It is insisted with great positiveness that Watson and 
others contradict "the practice of the Church," namely, 
its ordination of bishops. It is not agreed whether the 
ordination should be abolished to relieve the contradic- 
tion, or the contradiction should be allowed to stand. 
But then the sweeping argument comes: if these author- 
ities contradict the practice of our Church, ichat are the 



190 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



authorities good for f That " practice " was received 
from John Wesley ; it is embodied in the history of our 
Church; it is expressed in her fundamental documents, 
and it forms a part of her constitution. To quote half 
a dozen writers who contradict the constitution of the 
Church as "the theory of the Church," is itself a con- 
tradiction; for the constitution of the Church is itself 
" the theory of the Church," and all those who contra- 
dict it are to be rejected as no authorities at all. 

Nothing is clearer than that those authorities them- 
selves, as Watson, imagine that they are explaining and 
defending the "practice;" whereas, they really "con- 
tradict " and demolish the very thing they are trying to 
defend. Now we submit that authorities so stultified 
as that (stultified even by those who quote them), who 
overthrow what they try to defend, are a trifle worse 
than nothing; and to claim that their "theory" is to 
be imputed to the Church as its "theory," is to stultify 
the Church. 

From the year 1785 to the year 1872 our Discipline, 
in its first section, says in express words that Wesley 
gave to Coke " letters of episcopal orders." What 
are letters of episcopal orders ? Of course they are 
written credentials announcing that Coke was authentic- 
ally endowed by ordination with " episcopal orders." 
Our fathers in that same first section say that they 
accepted Coke and Asbury because they were "satisfied 
of the validity of their ejriscopal ordination." All that 
can mean nothing else than that our founders required 
in the episcopacy they chose a valid " ordination," that 
Coke was endowed by a valid " ordination " with valid 
"orders," and that hence our episcopate is valid "or- 
ders." And this "section" is a constitutive document. 
It is the constitution of the Church declaring its own 
" theory." To quote sporadic dicta from eminent indi- 



Methodist Episcopacy. 



191 



viduals contradicting this declaration is to array them 
against the constitution of the Church. To "denounce" 
this declaration is to "denounce" our constitution and 
to " inveigh against our discipline." And our episcopal 
orders and ordination, as defined by this declaration are 
embodied into our restrictive rule, and can be changed 
only by the restrictive rule process. JVo one can, no 
one has attempted to, refute this argument. 

Did Wesley hold the Third Ordination to he Essential to the 
Bishop or Superintendent ? 

That Mr. Wesley considered it necessary to some or 
every sort of a superintendent we do not suppose; but 
that he considered it necessary to an episcopacy " after 
the practice of the primitive Church" is certain; for we 
have no example of a primitive episcopal Church with- 
out the three ordinations. If he did not consider the 
ordination essential, why did he confer it? That ordina- 
tion was a costly act to him. He knew beforehand the 
unparalleled storm, present and future, which that or- 
dination would bring upon his head. It was one of the 
boldest, if not the boldest act of his life; yet he braved 
all the opposition heroically. Up to the full measure 
of that heroism was his estimate of the ordination. And 
this is in full confirmation of the entire central granite 
of our argument, proving the essential nature of our 
ordination. We well know that, until his ordination, 
Asbury was never permitted, even at the risk of rebell- 
ion, to ordain an elder or administer a sacrament. 
From all these considerations it seems to us that there 
is not the shadow of excuse for a doubt that Wesley 
considered ordination essential to this episcopacy which 
he purposed to inaugurate, whether it was in some other 
or not. And so our fathers, as they testify in the first 
section of the Discipline, declare that they accept this 



192 Essays, Reviews, and Discoueses. 



episcopacy on account of the validity of its ordination; 
signifying thereby that, whether or not ordination be 
requirable for any possible episcopacy, they did require 
it in the episcopacy they purposed to accept. 

Consecration versus Ordination. 

The question was raised in the General Conference 
of 1880, When does a man become bishop — at and by 
his election, or by his ordination ? Strange that such 
a question should be raised by any Methodist compe- 
tent to be elected to General Conference ! Wesley or- 
dained and made Coke a bishop irrespective of any 
election whatever. Wesley's words of ordination were: 
"Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a 
superintendent in the Church of God, now committed 
unto thee by the imposition of our hands," etc. It is 
not by the election (for Coke was not elected at all) 
but by the imposition of hands that the office and work 
of a bishop are committed unto the candidate. Equally 
explicit is our own modified form : " The Lord pour 
upon thee the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a 
bishop in the Church of God now committed unto thee 
by the authority of the Church through the imposition 
of our hands," etc. According to this most excellent 
form, the episcopate is conferred by the manual impo- 
sition, but cannot be conferred otherwise than by "the 
authority of the Church," given through the General 
Conference election. The Church authorizes the offici- 
ating bishop to "commit" the office to the candidate. 
The election selects the man, the imposition confers the 
office. 

Our bishops, in 1 844, said that the action of ordina- 
tion was to " confirm " the election of the candidates. 
In the ordinary meaning of the word "confirm," that 
statement is certainly not true. Or at least it does not 



Methodist Episcopacy. 



193 



express the full import of the action. The election is a 
complete act, a fact accomplished, and neither receives 
nor needs any confirmation. What the imposition of 
hands does is to "commit" the office to the man already 
fully elected. On the one hand, the election does not 
commit the office to the elect man; on the other, the 
ordaining bishop has no power to refuse to ordain, or 
to ordain a man not elected. Should the bishop refuse 
to ordain, he would be guilty of contumacy. Should 
one or more bishops or one or more elders ordain a 
man not elected by the proper authority, no Annual 
Conference and no part of the Church could properly 
accept his authority. If, however, some other Christian 
body elects, either before or after the ordination, the 
man so ordained, he is indeed their bishop, and may be 
acknowledged as such. It is by the proper imposition 
of hands that the bishop is made (as Coke by Wes- 
ley) ; it is by the election that he is appropriated by a 
particular Church as its bishop. An ordained but not 
elected bishop would be bishop of no Church and of 
nothing. 

To prove that the General Conference has a right to 
abolish the ordination of bishops, the fact is referred to 
that it has already substituted the word "consecration." 
for " ordination." Now, 1. We have already shown that 
the words " ordination " and " consecration " are con- 
vertible terms;* that "consecration" is so used by Coke 
and Asbury; and that the General Conference has sim- 
ply changed one synonym for another. The General 
Conference did substitute " consecration " for Wesley's 
word, "ordination," but these words in the English 
language mean precisely the same thing; or, if there be 
a difference, the latter is the higher term. If, however, 

* Charles Wesley's charge agaiust his brother was, that he had 
" consecrated a bishop." 
13 



194 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



the change of the word is an essential change of the 
thing, whether to something higher or lower, then the 
change violated the Constitution of the Church.* 2. No 
one. doubts that, as in the case of baptism or ordination 
of elders, the General Conference may make incidental 
changes, but has it a right to abolish the ordinance of 
baptism or the presbyter ial ordination? 3. If our Gen- 
eral Conference has "done away" any constituent es- 
sential of our episcopate, or of our baptism, or of our 
presbyterial ordination, by a mere majority, it has vio- 
lated the constitution of the Church, and should forth- 
with undo its wrong. But such wrong we deny that it 
has done. 4. What the essential constituents of our 
episcopate are, and, therefore, what a General Confer- 
ence may not £t do away," we have amply shown. We 
showed that there were, at any rate, four essential ele- 
ments in the Wesleyan idea of episcopacy embodied in 
our restrictive rule, and so drew the line between the 
incidental and the essential, the changeable by bare 
majority and the unchangeable. To argue that either 
of these four essentials can be abolished by a bare ma- 
jority, because that majority has made some verbal and 
incidental changes in the formula, is invalid reasoning. 

Our Episcopacy a Powerful Executive Force. 

Whether our episcopacy is worth preserving is a 
legitimate question, at the proper time. To calculate 

* The purpose of this substitution, as stated by the mover, was the 
avoidance of "high-church phraseology." It is, however, worthy of 
note that Mr. Wesley, in modifying the English Ritual, wherever both 
consecrate and ordain, or their derivatives, are used, uniformly struck 
out the former and retained the latter; and when consecrate, alone, is 
used, he substituted for it the word ordain. This was, doubtless, to 
avoid the more prelatic and high-sounding term so favored by the 
divine right, apostolic sucoessionists. Our General Conference has in 
this, perhaps unawares, adopted what Wesley rejected. — Eds. 



Methodist Episcopacy. 195 



its cost in dollars and cents, and so to estimate whether 
it costs more than it comes to, is a proper process. 

In calculating the pecuniary cost of our episcopacy, it 
were well if it could, per contra, be ciphered how much 
our episcopacy, in its past entire history, and in its future 
possible history, has contributed and may contribute to 
the making the payment of that cost possible, easy, and 
desirable. From the time that our founder, Bishop 
Asbury, " the man on horseback," overran the United 
States in his own person and his itinerants, to the time 
when Kingsley laid himself to repose in Syria, what has 
our episcopacy been worth to us ? If it has not clearly 
" come to " a great deal more than it has cost, and when- 
ever it ceases to pay a good balance, then wipe it out. 
It was certainly the original spring of our movement. 
Through our whole career it has inaugurated, energized, 
unified, centralized, and guided us. Its founding and 
continuance are a creation of positive power to the 
Church. Taking a select corps of our best, deliberately 
chosen representative men, and presenting them before 
the world, doubles the moral power and prestige of each 
one of them, and doubles the structural impressiveness 
and moral power of the entire Church. We say it cre- 
ates in the Church a new sum total of moral and relig- 
ious power. It makes, in the first place, the Church 
itself a greater power in its balance and battle with the 
secular world ; in commanding the respect and atten- 
tion of the age, enabling us to push our peculiar institu- 
tions and methods persistently before the world, and so 
opening a successful way to our great mission of spread- 
ing scriptural holiness throughout the land. There is 
not a church, nor a minister, nor a loyal member, that 
does not experience, however little realized, the prestige 
of belonging to the Methodist Episcopal Church. It 
makes, secondly, the Church a greater power in its bal- 



196 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses.* 



ance with sister denominations. And, finally, it is a com- 
plete make-weight in restoring the lost balance between 
ministry and laity; enabling the former to maintain its 
proper standing in equipoise with the overwhelming 
power of the former. With the laity, in the total, are 
the numbers, the wealth, and all the substantial power. 
With the lay officiary in a given church are permanent 
position, permanent and regular organization, home pos- 
session, and money power, in balance with the itinerant 
minister, who is transient, alone, and penniless. But 
against this fearful over-balance our structural Church 
polity, crowned, confirmed, and weighted with the epis- 
copacy, has a powerful, yet impartial, protectorate, not 
only in its efficiency to right the individual wrong, but 
in the fact that the venerability of that power inures 
in so large a degree to the dignity and weight of the 
ministry. The highest executive department of the 
Church is, as it should be, not lay, but ministerial. And 
©ur reflective laity themselves feel a higher and nobler 
self-respect in dealing with a body of ministry whom 
they respect. Since the happy adoption of lay repre- 
sentation the laity have a co-ordinate authority with 
the ministry over the bishops. The laity have their 
co-ordinate share in electing the bishops ; and the epis- 
copate itself cannot stand long after the laity has made 
up its mind that it does not morally and pecuniarily 
balance cost. But while it stands, it is a memento that 
our Church's highest executive is, as it should be, min- 
isterial and not lay. We suggest, then, especially to 
our younger ministry, the query how wise it may be to 
indulge largely in that fine democratic eloquence about 
" the priesthood of the people," the f etichism of ordina- 
tion, and the oppressiveness of episcopacy. For our 
own part, we repeat, with double emphasis, what we 
said several years ago. We are not Presbyterian nor 



Methodist Episcopacy. 



197 



Congregationalist, any more than we are Calvinist. 
And ours is not, and we trust never will be, a Methodist 
Presbyterian Church, nor a Methodist Congregationalist 
Church, nor a Methodist Quaker Church. It is just 
what Wesley and the fathers meant it should be, The 
Methodist Episcopal Church. 

Our Methodist Episcopacy, formed and maintained 
by the free-will of the Church, is the most legitimate 
episcopacy extant in Christendom. It is co-existent 
with our existence as a Church, a bishop being the ear- 
liest officer, chronologically, of our churchly organiza- 
tion. Our episcopacy is based upon our very founda- 
tions as a Church. None of its essential attributes can 
be rightfully changed but by a constitutional change. 
Thus firmly founded, our great blessing is that it sets up, 
and can set up, no jure divino claims. Our Episcopalian 
friends have an ineradicable notion that we Methodists 
feel the aching want of something which we have not 
and they have, namely, a jure divino ordained line of 
bishops. But from that nightmare, our prayer is, " Good 
Lord, deliver us." Our episcopacy will stand no longer 
than the Church is convinced of its value. The great 
success of our history is thus far its ample vindication. 



SUBSTITUTIONAL ATONEMENT. 

"Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto 
death." — Matt, xxvi, 38. 

When first the Moravian missionaries went to pub- 
lish the Gospel to the savage tribes that border on the 
polar circle, acting on the secular maxim, that civiliza- 
tion and morality must precede Christianity, they com- 
menced by attempting to impart wise lessons of economy 



198 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



and ethics. They found it impossible thus to attract 
the barbarians' attention. Renouncing, then, their false 
philosophy, they next began, like true ministers of Jesus,* 
to unfold the character of the Saviour, to outspread the 
narrative of redemption, to paint the sorrows and gen- 
erous self-devotion of the crucifixion. That moment 
the wandering eye began to fix, and the savage heart 
began to soften. In the cross was, by experiment, de- 
veloped a power, unsuspected even by its most faithful 
adherents, to win the wildest spirit. The doctrine that 
civilization must take precedence of the Gospel, w^as dis- 
missed to its own place among the repudiated fallacies 
of conceited unbelief. The power of the dying Sav- 
iour's sufferings was anew revealed as the great secret 
of not only a world's redemption, but a world's conver- 
sion. 

Our text leads us to the precincts of Gethsemane, 
and, therefore, into the range of this great subject. 
With inquiring minds, and yet melting hearts, let us 
contemplate the scene and humbly scan the doctrine it 
unfolds. 

It was upon the late evening of Thursday of the pas- 
sion week that our Lord, after completing the passover 
supper with hymning the great Hallel, arose, .and, fol- 
lowed by the sorrowing eleven, walking through the 
eastern suburbs of the city, crossed the dark Kedron, 
and approached the margin of the ascending Olivet. 
There, leaving the main body of his train, he selects 
the chosen three — Peter, James, and John — the elect 
among the elect — and departed into the depths of the 
garden, or grove, of lofty olives, called Gethsemane. 
The same choice three w T ho beheld the transfiguration 
on the mount, where Jesus was encircled with a glori- 
ous exaltation, must now witness the agonies of the 
garden amid the pressures of his humiliation. Yet it 



Substitutional Atonement. 



199 



is at a reverent distance. " Tarry here," the sufferer had 
said, "while I go and pray yonder ;" and now he re- 
tired to a still deeper privacy of prayer. Then began 
the time of woe. Thrice did he depart, and utter sup- 
plication of such pathos as never fell from other lips 
than his. Thrice did he return, to find his disciples 
weighed down with supernatural stupor, as if the hour 
and the power of darkness rested heavier upon them 
than the shades of approaching midnight. As he prayed 
the last time in his loneliness, deepest was his agony of 
all; and while the angel wing was fanning his brow, 
drops of sweat, like blood, were oozing from its pores. 

Let us trace some of the deep thoughts suggested by 
this scene : 

I. And, first, we repudiate the notion that the woes of 
the garden were the pangs of a mere human fear of ap- 
proaching death ; and we afiirm that they were a dis- 
tinct and independent part of our atonement. We see 
the sufferings of redemption in Gethsemane as on Cal- 
vary. In the garden man was lost by Adam the first ; 
in the garden was man redeemed by Adam the second. 
If the sorrows of the garden were the shrinkings of fear, 
Socrates was a more genuine moral hero than Jesus. 
But upon this argument we dwell not. We affirm that 
not a syllable of the parallel narratives of all the four 
evangelists drops a hint of fear. He had predicted 
antecedently every step of the process from his entrance 
into Jerusalem to his resurrection from the sepulcher. 
By a divine foresight he moved lord of the whole scene 
and of the whole work before him. By a serene maj- 
esty he was lord of the whole group of characters, 
friend or foe, that circled around him. When the des- 
tined moment of suffering came, he meekly submits, in 
compliance with the law, that the Scripyres must be ful- 
filled. But even then he is lord of his own submission, 



200 Essays, Reviews, axd Discourses. 



and lord of the powers to whom he submits. And when, 
as he leaves the chosen three in the garden, and departs 
a stone's throw into loneliness, with what emphasis is 
it said, as the destined moment arrives, he " began to be 
sorrowful." As the vast hours of human history roll 
the moment on, the great clock of time strikes, and the 
first stroke of redemptive sorrow answers. Then, in 
the words of our text, does he confess that not fear. 
but a sorrow bigger than his heart can heave, is on his 
soul. Its terrible drench is too damp for the spark of 
life ; and did not a divine fire still feed it, the sacred 
ember would expire. And then he was "sore amazed" 
— amazed ! as if depths of horror, mysteries of evil, 
rolled themselves up before his view, so frightful, so 
unutterably strange, that even his prescient mind had 
never yet conceded them. And he was "very heavy y" 
the very reverse of fearful excitement, and the very 
token that the same vapor from the bottomless pit, that 
steeped the senses of his disciples, invaded the soul of 
their Lord and Master. And then, in the prayer poured 
forth with his agonizing sweat, he prays, not so much for 
exemption from the coming cross, as deliverance from 
the present " cup," whose dregs he now is drinking. 
Not one thought of fear. It is all a present sorrow ; a 
separate and distinct part of redemption's twofold 
work.* 

II. Our second position is, that we repudiate the idea 

* St. Paul does indeed (Heb. v, X) ascribe to him a "fear." Yet 
this was not a mortal fear of corporeal pain and death. It was a just 
fear of his own incompetency to the "onp" of the atonement; a fear 
which was the basis of that prayer for divine aid which could be 
divinely thereupon granted. This "fear" formed, therefore, a proper 
part of the mental process of the great work. The sufferer was heard 
in respect to that which he feared; for a diviue aid made nature 
physically sufficient to the divine task. 



Substitutional Atonement. 201 



that the Son of God was here overwhelmed with the bolts 
of the Father's personal wrath • and we affirm that his 
sorrows were a tribute to the demands of pure and im- 
personal justice. That is, we shrink from the picture 
that is sometimes drawn, with terrific distinctness, de- 
lineating the Father Almighty as hurling his thunders, 
in blasting shocks, upon the unprotected person of his 
shrinking and suffering Son. On the contrary, all of 
directly divine in the transaction impregnated the per- 
son and sustained the strength of the glorious sufferer. 
Negatively, indeed, ihe divine countenance was plainly, 
in a measure, withheld. And truly this is woeful. For- 
saken of God ! Who could endure to have him, the 
God, the life, the light, the warmth of the world, with- 
draw and leave us stiff in the frozen darkness of some 
drear corner of the universe ? Indirectly, also, the gov- 
ernment of God accorded with the will of the sufferer 
to pay for man's redemption the due of pure and inde- 
pendent justice. Justice is a separate, eternal, uncre- 
ated principle. It arises in its own clear power to the 
view in the combinations of things, and makes its stern 
yet rightful demands of men, and even of God. As 
well could divine power construct a vast material world 
in space, unsubjected to the laws of geometry, as con- 
struct a vast government of divine order, unsubjected 
to the laws of eternal justice. As easily might the mul- 
titudes of objects and events be poured forth from the 
hand of creation or providence, without submitting to 
the laws of arithmetic or number, as for the train of 
moral results to march forth unsubmitting to the laws 
of truth and right. Yet the same pure moral sense by 
which we recognize the element of justice, appearing 
in voluntary relations, affirms that such justice should 
itself be limited by mercy whenever the ends of justice 
are attained — without infliction, or with the least pos- 



202 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



sible infliction. Mercy may rightfully rejoice against 
judgment. And the ends of justice are attained when- 
ever at once the criminal is reformed and regenerated, 
and the public rule of order is maintained by the effect- 
ual condemnation of sin. If the Christ, by suffering, 
furnished the requisites by which the sinner may be 
reformed and public right can be sustained, then we 
need no outpouring of personal wrath from the Father 
Almighty to solve the problem of his woes. 

Yet let us be just to the theology that has used this 
language attributing the sufferings of Christ to the 
personal wrath of God. Essential justice is indeed 
impersonal. It inheres in the nature and relations of 
things. Yet, in another sense, it becomes the attribute 
of the being who truly maintains it. And the wrath 
of God is simply his disposition, purpose, and act of 
maintaining corrective and punitive justice. Just so 
the justice of a government may be colloquially styled 
the wrath of that government. The sentence pro- 
nounced in the sovereign's court, the Court of King's 
Bench, is the official wrath of the official sovereign. In 
this sense, though sometimes with doubtful good effect, 
the sufferings of Christ, endured for the end of God's 
governmental justice, may be conceptually 'styled his 
endurance of the Father's wrath. 

III. In the third place, our Redeemer paid the due 
tribute to governmental justice by suffering in the stead 
of the sinner the punishment of his sin. Herein we fully 
adopt the old-fashioned but never-to-be-obsolete doc- 
trine of substitutional atonement. And in order to real- 
ize what we mean by suffering punishment in the sin- 
ner's stead, let us take a most plain and common sense 
instance. 

More than thirty years ago Mr. Fauntleroy, an emi- 
nent banker of England, of great financial talent, was 



Substitutional Atonement. 



203 



found guilty of forgery and sentenced to capital pun- 
ishment. The public sympathy was aroused, and peti- 
tions "by thousands poured upon the sovereign for par- 
don. In vain. The sovereign's human heart was ready 
to melt ; but the majesty of law must he maintained. 
During the excitement a gentleman, whom we will call 
Mr. A., came forward and offered to suffer the punish- 
ment in Fauntleroy's stead. Of course neither the 
statute laws nor customs of England permitted such an 
arrangement. The gentleman was dismissed, and the 
public smiled at his simplicity. 

Suppose that this offer had been made, not under the 
government of England, but under the sway of an ab- 
solute monarch of purest wisdom and bene\ olence, un- 
biased by conventional customs and open to the pure 
dictates of absolute right* Mr. A. comes forward and 
says, "I offer to die in this man's stead. I have a right 
to yield to suffering for him l»y my own free consent : 
and, being inflicted at my own desire, it does me no 
wrong ; and being inflicted on a capably consenting 
subject for public ends, it can be no crime in govern- 
ment. " The sovereign reasons thus: "By this man's 
voluntary suffering, which does him no wrong, mercy 
may be extended to the criminal and the public sym- 
pathy may be gratified, while the crime of forgery is 
still condemned, the majesty of law is honored, and the 
authority of government is maintained/' I much mis- 
take if the common sense of my audience would con- 
demn him if he accepted the offer; or if ''the universal 
common sense of mankind " would not sustain the deed. 
And still abstract absolute justice, which rigorously de- 
mands that the guilty alone should suffer, is not executed. 
Yet, while abstract justice is not done, something higher 
and nobler — something the benevolent sense still more 
approves — is attained instead. For we have before re- 



204 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



marked that the same moral sense which demands pure 
justice, reverses its own decision and condemns pure 
justice when all the ends of justice are attained, with 
mercy in addition. Over-justice is cruelty. And that 
is over-justice which insists on exaction that attains an 
inferior result. 

But the case I have put increases in its clearness by 
enlarging it** magnitude. Instead of Fauntleroy, put 
our entire race; and instead of Mr. A., put the man 
Jesus ; yet the man Jesus dignified with a divinity 
which immeasurably raises the value of his suffering to 
honor the law and condemn sin. By so much as mercy 
is thus secured for a whole race rather than for a single 
man; by so much as that mercy is secured by the brief 
suffering of the loftiest dignitary; by so much as a di- 
vine law is sustained and rebellion under a divine gov- 
ernment is condemned; by so much is the atonement 
which redeems us superior to the substitution which is 
supposed to redeem a Fauntleroy. And this result is 
attained by the Redeemer suffering the penalty of the 
sinner's guilt instead of the sinner's self. 

But when we speak of suffering the puni-hment for 
the sinner, let us analyze our own language. The sub- 
stitute, truly and strictly, is not punished. That endur 
ance which to the sinner is punishment, is to the substi- 
tute only simple suffering. Why ? Because punishment, 
in its own idea, implies in the sufferer the guilty act as 
its correlative. Wherever the sinner and the sufferer are 
not the same, it is only with an allowable inaccuracy 
that the suffering can be called punishment. It follows 
that it is not strictly accurate to say that Christ was 
punished, or that he truly suffered the punishment of 
sin. 

Still less is it necessary to say that the forgery of 
Fauntleroy is imputed to A. He is not the forger's 



Substitutional Atonement. 



205 



substitute in the crime, but only his substitute in the 
suffering. He is not morally, nor actually, nor legally 
guilty. There is no strict transfer of guilt; for guilt 
is strictly personal. It is then wholly unnecessary, ex- 
• cept as an allowable freedom of language, to say that 
Christ was a sinner, that sin was imputed to him. Sim- 
ply, the innocent endures suffering that the guilty may 
not endure punishment. When, in free inaccuracy of 
speech, we call the suffering of the substitute punish- 
ment, in order to justify our terms, we may assume that 
with a supposed punishment there shall be a supposed 
guilt and sin. Only conception must not be taken for 
perception; and popular phrase must not be taken for 
rigid expression of language. 

Nor is it quite accurate to say that the substitute en- 
dures precisely the same suffering as the sinner. One 
man cannot suffer another man's pain. My head cannot 
feel another man's headache, nor my limbs another 
man's rheumatism. I may suffer a very similar in char- 
acter and degree; but the similarity is not sameness. 
Nor, in the case of the substitute, is the similarity of 
the suffering very fixed or exact. Mr. A. has little of a 
similar mental pain with Fauntleroy. None of his re- 
morse has he; none of his bitter recollections; none of 
his overwhelming shame, and none of his dread of death. 
Perhaps he has less sensibility of body; more strength 
of nerve; and so much alacrity for his fate that there is 
no dread in anticipating, no pain in feeling the last 
throb. Yet all is accomplished, however varied the 
operation, if the honor of law is sustained and govern- 
ment maintained in its power. We still say that the 
substitute suffered the punishment of the criminal, and 
in the same way it is that we may say that Christ suffers 
the punishment of the sinner. 

IV. At this point let us attempt in the fourth place 



206 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



reverently to conjecture the nature of the woes of Geth- 
semane. We have rejected the idea that they were the 
pangs of anticipating fear ; or, in a strict sense, the 
direct and angry infliction from the Father Almighty. 
We are not obliged nor disposed to admit that they 
were the same as the suffering sensations of the sinner 
would be. We are only obliged to admit that his suf- 
ferings are such as, instead of the sufferings of the sin- 
ner, to meet the demands of law, condemn the exist- 
ence of sin, and sustain the divine order. He suffered 
with a higher dignity of character than belonged to our 
race, illustrious though that be, and so conferred a higher 
honor on the law. Yet he suffered not the pangs of 
personal remorse or the sense of deserved shame. He 
Was not obliged to suffer eternally, for an infinite aid 
enabled him to concentrate, perhaps, an eternity of sor- 
row into a few brief hours; as an infinity of dignity 
enabled him to expiate the dishonor of law, by assert- 
ing its infinite worth. And as he possessed no personal 
guilt, so he endured no strict personal punishment, only 
simple sufferings in the stead of others' punishment, and 
effecting the same and higher results. 

What, then, were the precise sources and nature of 
those sufferings in Gethsemane ? He sorrowed, we are 
told ; he " was heavy ; " he was " sore amazed ; " he was 
" in an agony." These are all sufferings in the spirit^ 
and hence we have perhaps a key. As the sufferings 
of Calvary were of the body, so they were from the world 
of bodies ; and just so as the woes of Gethsemane were 
of the spirit, so they were from the world of spirits. As 
the sufferings of Calvary were from sin and sinners cor- 
poreal, so the sufferings of Gethsemane were from sin 
and devils incorporeal. Of the great twofold work of the 
atonement, the former was the visible and patent part; 
the latter the invisible and mysterious. In this mys- 



SOBSTITUTI N A L Ax NEMENT. 



207 



terious part, the visible and audible effects in the agonies 
of the garden are alone depicted; but in these sensible 
effects the awful, the measureless, the bottomless causes 
and sources are fearfully suggested. Not punished for 
his own sin. the sufferings of that pure soul were in the 
presence and at the sight of sin itself in all its horrors. 
They were his deep shudders before the monstrous face 
of hell. Nothing to sorrow for in himself, the sorrows 
of the Son of man were the overwhelming deluge of 
humanity's flood of sorrows, rolling their waves upon 
his sympathies, and sinking him in their own death. 
That sore "amazement" — what was it but the depths 
of evil, the surges of the bottomless pit, rol.ing up hor- 
rors to his view, inconceivable hitherto to his pure mind ? 
Xo wonder that he was " very heavy " at the shock; 
for could we, friends, conceive for one moment all that 
is embraced in this one word hell, that terrible concep- 
tion, without special aid to sustain its shock, would strike 
us to the earth. And when all these complicated forms 
of woe which evil could present, were forced upon him, 
it was fitting that the agonized prayer which recorded 
his own utmost of shrinking dread yet perfect resigna- 
tion, should stand forever as our ensample. 

Such was the terrible woe of Gethsemane. When 
man. the great collective person of our race, was under 
sentence of death, there came a loving stranger, who 
said to the King Jehovah, '-'Let me suffer in his stead; 
thereby sin shall be damned, law shall be honored, and 
thy throne be, in principle, sustained ; and still man shall 
be heir of mercy, and render heaven sweet with the 
eternal anthems of bis gratitude. I will endure the 
ocean of his griefs; I will encounter the hell of his 
guilt; I will bare my breast to the blow of the infernal 
smiters of his soul, if all this may stand as the substi- 
tute of justice to the uttermost on his being.'' O surely, 



208 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



never in all the conceptions of the most transcendent 
genius could be wrought up a drama unfolding in such 
fullness and variety the grandest and the tenderest of 
interests. In the covenant of the New Testament, Je- 
hovah gives the wondrous pledge, the oath of mercy. 
" As I live," says God most high, " because thou hast 
done this mighty work, hast suffered this great equiva- 
lent of human penalty, whoever of men shall accept thy 
deed shall be accepted of me." 

V. And now, fifthly, of that which teas supernatural, 
mysterious, and unearthly in Gethsemane, the natural, 
the corporeal, and the human counterpart is laid bare 
upon Calvary. All the hierarchy of demoniac powers, 
all the intensities of spiritual wickedness poured their 
worst upon his soul in the garden. All the hosts of 
wicked men, the vilest specimens well selected from the 
race, and all the energies of human hate and scorn, sa- 
tiated their utmost appetite on his body at Golgotha. 
Dream not because Gethseraane's work was invisible, 
and thereby less impressible upon our senses, that it 
was any the less an integral part of the atonement. 
More, rather. It was fitting that, as in the work of 
Gethsemane, his suffering soul was made a spectacle to 
angels and exposed to the sneer of fiends and devils, so 
on the tree he should be made known in suffering to the 
eyes as well as from the hands of men. Corporeal man 
can only thus be made to realize how he truly suffered. 
Calvary is thus the expositor of Gethsemane. It is the 
external part standing as the figure of the internal. It 
is the material revelation of the invisible reality. And 
being material and palpable, the cross, while compre- 
hending but a small item of the entire, can stand the 
symbol and suggestion of all that Gethsemane, as all 
that Calvary, embraces. 

VI. But, all this infliction has — it is our sixth step — a 



Substitutional Atonement. 



209 



strict judicial nature. Did it ever strike you, friends, 
that the wicked, whether fiends or men, are often, per- 
haps always, the executioners of God's judicial sentences? 
They are, as it were, the base hangmen of God's repub- 
lic; and, as in many governments, the hangman and the 
malefactor are morally akin. The devil and his angels 
are the tormentors of the damned. And is not sin the 
essence of hell ? What are those two ingredients in 
that burning lake — fire and brimstone — but sin and 
guilt ? What is hell but the kindred dregs at the bot- 
tom of the cup of sin, which he who sips at top may 
have to swallow to the utmost ? And what were the 
legions of fiends and men at the cruciHxion but the reg- 
ular regiment of criminal execution ? Thence, when 
our divine substitute came to endure the substitute suf- 
fering for human retribution, like the substitute who 
desired to suffer for the English forger, he endures all 
the external forms of judicial infliction at the same ex- 
ternal hands as the guilty sufferer himself might have 
endured. 

All that terrific paraphernalia of the crucifixion, with 
its surrounding host of furious foes, its companionship 
of thieves, and rejection in comparison with the robber, 
with its spitting, its buffet, and its mock demand for 
prophecy, with its thorny crown, its piercing spear, and 
its fatal cross, are the external cruelties of men to his 
body, parallel to the mockeries and wrath of their breth- 
ren in judicial infliction, the fiends of the infernal prison. 
Sense may, indeed, be most impressed with the mate- 
rial part. But he who would rise to all the grandeur of 
the entire transaction must comprehend, in one great 
unity, the whole work of the glorious atoning sufferer. 
And so comprehending it, we behold the unholy fra- 
ternity of earth and hell at once exhibiting their own 
twofold infernal character to the eyes of angels and of 
14 



210 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



men, at the same time that they are truly the execu- 
tioners in the divine hand of that infliction which, ex- 
ecuted upon the guilty, would be divine punishment. 
They were as truly God's executioners as Assyria was 
the ax in the hands of Jehovah. So are earth and hell 
compelled to be the instruments of divine retribution. 
So do the wicked — sinners and devils —become God's 
punishers of sin. So does one part of hell execute di- 
vine vengeance on the other. So is hell its own punisher. 

And as the agents of this stupendous work belonged 
to two diverse worlds, so may we believe that the work 
itself rolls and ever will roll its waves of surprise and 
wonder through all the ranks of intelligences of both 
natures. The cross of Christ on earth, we know, was 
visible to men; it has taken its central position, too, we 
know, in human history; it has worked its transforming 
wonders over society in ages past; it has yet to go 
forth, in still more world-wide power, through ages yet 
to come. But no human tongue can tell w T ith what 
electric power it may have thrilled through the worlds 
unseen. Scripture hints, but does not tell. Of the 
principalities and po wers, of the mights and the domin- 
ions, which we only know by sudden lightning flashes 
of inspiration, whose light departs before our eye can 
analyze the stupendous systems they so momently re- 
veal, we know neither the mode nor the amount of the 
influence they may receive. But this we dare believe, 
that the influences of the cross — including Gethsemane 
as well as Calvary — send their power far, reaching, as 
the lines of gravitation itself, through all the systems of 
God's moral universe. 

To the doctrine of substitutional atonement we may 
now remark that it is objected that by it wrong is done: 
1. By transferring guilt; 2. By causing the innocent to 
suffer; and 3. By letting the guilty go free. 



Substitutional Atonement. 



211 



First, thoughtful objectors to the atonement say: 
" We cannot see how guilt can be separated from the 
wrong-doer and made the attribute of the innocent." 
But, in answer, we deny that our view of the atone- 
ment presupposes this transferability of guilt. Guilt is 
personal and untransferable, being inseparable from the 
intentioned author of crime. The innocent is, in our 
view, the substitute for the wrong-doer, not in guilt, not 
in desert, not even strictly in punishment, but only in 
suffering. He voluntarily undergoes a simple suffering ', 
that another man may not undergo punishment. Endur- 
ance, indeed, is in a sense interchanged, but not guilt. 
Pain is transferred, but not penalty. 

But, second, the objector answers, "Here, then, is the 
wrong — that the innocent suffers in order that the guilty 
may escape." Let us divide the objection. That the 
guilty escape will soon receive reply. At present the 
point of supposed wrong is, that the innocent suffer. 
And now we maintain the right of a free being volun- 
tarily to suffer. Do we not all claim, in view of a great 
good, the right nobly to endure ? For fortune, for 
fame, for country, for love, for hate, how do men brave 
and glory in toil, in privation, in danger, in sorrow, in 
blood, in death. Does not the patriot suffer for - his 
country ? Does not the martyr suffer for the truth ? 
And O that mother — can you deny, can you prevent her 
suffering for the existence, for the fortune, for the honor, 
of her child ? No. Ours is the prerogative, guilty or 
innocent, to suffer. And if man, so little master of his 
own being, may claim, with the divine consent, this use 
of himself, how much -more the God-man, more com- 
pletely lord of himself, may claim, with the divine con- 
sent, to voluntarily, freely, consecrate himself to suffer- 
ing life and death. For the joy that was set before 
him, he rightfully endured the cross, despising the 



212 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



shame, and is set down at the right hand of God. And 
so said the glorious sufferer himself: "Therefore doth 
my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I 
might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I 
lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, 
and I have power to take it again. This commandment 
have I received from my Father." 

And if he had a right voluntarily to suffer, then that 
free-chosen suffering was right. It was right as a part 
of divine order. It was right in Christ who suffered. 
It was right in God, who not inflicted but permitted — 
or, if not permitted, vailed his face and withdrew his 
preventing hand, while the powers of evil were rolling 
on their evil consummations from which he would educe 
the final good. But if right in Christ and right in God, 
it was not right in the fierce malevolence of fiends in 
Gethsemane or men at Calvary. If the source of those 
sufferings was the malice of hell, the resulting good to 
man renders hell none the less guilty. The treason of 
Judas contributed to human redemption, but that re- 
demption never exculpated Judas from treason. 

But, third, it is objected, If innocent men have a right 
to suffer, and to suffer for others, still it is wrong that 
the guilty should escape; and so wrong for the innocent 
to suffer that the guilty may escape. Is it, I ask, always 
wrong for the guilty to escape ? Alas for us ! Who, 
then, can be saved ? If so, then we must believe not in 
universal salvation, but in universal damnation. But is 
the escape of the guilty always wrong? If so, then 
mercy is blotted from among the virtues and eclipsed 
from the divine attributes. The escape of the guilty, 
I affirm, then, is wrong where it results from the weak- 
ness, the carelessness, or the wickedness, of government; 
or where it results in the degradation of law, the dis- 
honor of government, the exaltation of sin, or the con- 



Substitutional Atonement. 213 



tradiction of God's divine order. Where these are 
saved, Mercy may rejoice over Justice. She becomes a 
higher and diviner Justice. 

Thus far, upon the grounds of reason, we have main- 
tained the admissibility of the substitutional atonement 
— not its fact. Its reality can be proved only by reve- 
lation. The actual mode of God's dealing is declared 
only in God's own word. And opening that word, if 
this doctrine is not taught in a rich variety of form in 
that word, it is a strangely deceptive word. Open we 
first the Old Covenant. Turn to those visible prophe- 
cies of the suffering Messiah, the Mosaic sacrifices. Did 
not the victim bleed as the substitute of the offerer? 
On the day of the Passover a lamb was slain and his 
blood was sprinkled over the lintel of Israel's door, so 
that when Jehovah sought to destroy he should see the 
blood and pass over harmless. Why was blood selected 
as the signal rather than a white flag, or a painted sign, 
or a lettered telegraph f The reason is plain. Israel 
was held to be a death-deserving sinner as well as Egypt; 
but Jehovah accepted the slain victim as his substitute, 
and the blood upon his door as the evidence. So the 
apostle assures us that Christ our Passover is slain for — 
mark you— -for us. And then, in the great day of the 
atonement, Israel brought the victim before the taber- 
nacle, and, confessing his sins, did, by the hands of the 
high-priest, lay his own sins upon the victim, and then 
sacrifice the victim's life. Plainly therein Israel,- by 
God's command, confessed that his own sins deserved 
that death which his victim suffered in his stead. From 
this system of visible prophecy turn we to the verbal 
prophecies of the predictive Scriptures. Hear Isaiah, 
in that wonderful fifty-third chapter: "Surely he hath 
borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows. . . . He was 
wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our 



214 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



niquities : the chastisement of our peace was upon him; 
and with his stripes we are healed. The Lord hath laid 
on him the iniquity of us all." What language, if not 
this, can express substitution? Coming down to the 
New Testament, what says the Lord himself of his own 
death ? " The Son of man came to give his life a ran- 
som for many." What is a ransom but a substitute ? 
The ransom given for a detained captive is a substitute 
received by the detainer in the stead of his captive. 
And similarly testify the New Testament writers: "He 
became sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be- 
come the righteousness of God through him." " Christ 
hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, having be- 
come a curse for us." 

Never can this phraseology, forming as it does the 
great current of New Testament language on the sub- 
ject, be fairly understood to mean less than this: that 
the innocent Christ stood in the place of the guilty, and 
endured those sufferings which, upon the criminal him- 
self, were literal and just punishment.* 

And this atonement, we closingly remark, is for all — 
all of our sinful, fallen race. Scripture declares with- 
out reserve He died for all — He tasted death for every 
man. Universalism then infers, if all are atoned for, 
then are all saved. If Christ suffered for sin, how can 
man a second time suffer, so that the penalty for one 
sin be twice inflicted? Partialism replies that the Sav- 
iour died not for all but for a part. And truly we might 
seem to be able to say that Christ died solely for volun- 

* To those who may argue th.it our proof- texts assert transfer of 
guilt, and so of punishment, we suggest a brief reply. Every passage 
that can be quoted for such a purpose, could be applied with the 
most perfect naturalness to Mr. A. in the supposition ; and so appiied, 
the limitations we have drawn would be strictly maintainable. Let 
the experiment be tried upon our every quoted text. 



Substitutional Atonement. 



215 



tary true believers, and thus admit a conditional par- 
tialism. But not so does Scripture put the case. Script- 
ure, undeterred by the apparent logical consequence, 
will have it that for some the Saviour died in vain; 
that even the weak brother for whom Christ died may 
perish; that the apostate may deny the Lord that bought 
him, and bring upon himself swift destruction. For 
him who is damned, as truly as for him who is saved, 
was atonement m;ide. And Scripture leaves it there. 
If there be a wrong about it, that wrong is left upon 
the sinner's head to aggravate his guilt and deepen his 
damnation. God in his word grounds himself on his 
own divine idea of universal intentional mercy. Yet is 
that mercy conditioned. The atonement is for all, and 
for all equally and alike; requiring of all and of each 
that as God hath accepted the dying Saviour as his sat- 
isfaction, so man shall accept him as his substitute. 
God hath provided all ; Christ hath done all ; man must 
accept all. He must thus accord with the covenant. 
He must thus harmonize, as the third consenting party, 
to the arrangement of mercy. Thus must he be saved 
by his own consent. As God was free in providing re- 
demption, as Christ was free in achieving it, so man 
must he free in accepting and receiving it. Otherwise 
it is a lost work. As love may be wasted on unwor- 
thy objects, so redemption may be wasted on unaccept- 
ing subjects. To all eternity there may, through the 
sinner's fault, be these three wrongs: That the penalty 
of sin be twice inflicted, that redeeming blood be shed 
in vain, and that an infinite amount of saving power 
shall lie forever waste. Not one drop, indeed, of that 
rich blood shall waste, for every drop shall go to glorify 
the faithful Church triumphant. But in that every 
drop there is a surplus power that might have saved 
the untold millions of the lost; power enough to have 



216 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 

left the prison-house of woe forever vacant. But still 
that power of blood is not quite lost. It cries to heaven 
and earth. It goes through the universe with the tale 
how^ merciful was God, how loving was Christ, how im- 
penitent was man. To the very lost it testifies the rich- 
ness of the provision, the freeness of its olfer, the ease 
of its acceptance, the guilt of the rejection, and the 
right of the condemnation. And this plenteous fullness 
of that blood shall add an infinitely abounding volume 
to the song of the crimsoned hosts — the ten thousand 
times ten thousand and thousands of thousands who 
forever cry, " Worthy is the Lamb ... to receive power, 
and riches, and wisdom; . . . for thou wast slain, and 
hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kin- 
dred, and tongue, and people, and nation." 



THE DOUBLE BAPTISM. 

"I indeed have baptized you with water: but he shall baptize you 
with the. Holy Ghost." — Mark i, 8. 

Our text proves, if the thing needs any proof, that 
baptism is of tAvo kinds, the real and the symbolical. In 
the former, the administrator is God; the element is his 
Holy Spirit; and the subject is the human being. In 
the latter, the administrator is God's minister; the ele- 
ment is water; and the subject is the human person. 
Our purpose, at the present time, is, to discuss the mode 
in which both these baptisms (or this twofold baptism) 
are performed; and the question of mode involves two 
points, namely, the motion and the amount. In regard 
to the motion, we have the question, Is the subject 
plunged into the element, or does the element descend upon 
the subject f In regard to the amount, the question is, 



The Double Baptism. 



217 



Must the element be so abundant as that it shall come 
in contact with the entire surface of the person f We 
shall endeavor, as far as possible, in the fear of God, in 
submission to his word, and in the spirit of Christian 
candor toward our brethren, of our own or any other 
denomination, who differ from us, to ascertain the truth 
upon these points, both in regard to baptism real, and 
baptism symbolical. 

I. REAL BAPTISM. 

We fearlessly assume that when the Holy Spirit per- 
forms baptism, not only is the thing real, but the term 
is literal. Immersionists have as boldly assumed, and 
affusionists have as tamely granted, that because the 
term here was spiritual, it was therefore figurative. 
Few epithets are more frequently confounded in theol- 
ogy than these last two; yet few are more distinct, or 
more necessary to be distinguished. The term spiritual 
is opposed to corporeal / figurative to literal. A spirit- 
ual term is the literal designation of a spiritual or incor- 
poreal object or operation. It is true, that a large 
amount of those terms are borrowed from the material 
world, and hence have a sort of figurative origin; but, 
the moment they become an ordinary technic, they are 
literal. Yet it is by no means certain that the spirit- 
ual term, baptism, is borrowed from its first application 
to its water symbol. Xew, I pour, and pairr't^o), I bap- 
tize, are the literal names of real, though spiritual, oper- 
ations ; not borrowed, probably, from any religious rite, 
but transferred from their general use to express an 
invisible, though real, performance. The application 
of (3aTTTL^G), both to the real and visible baptism in 
Christianity, so far as we know, commenced simultane- 
ously; both taking their origin, under divine guidance, 
from John the Baptist. If either, the baptism of the 



218 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



Holy Spirit is literal, and that of water, both in name 
and thing, symbolical. 

It is maintained that the word (3arTTi£u), of itself, has 
so positive and invariable a meaning in all Greek liter- 
ature, that it settles the point, of itself, in every case. 
No difficulties, no improbabilities, it seems, can obviate 
its single force; and we are required to surrender, un- 
less we can produce a case of an impossibility of its 
meaning to plunge. Such controversialists are hard 
task-masters; but without granting such a force in the 
word, we accept the challenge; we will demonstrate 
the impossibility. We take the case of real baptism; 
and, before we have done, we expect to show that it 
cannot be immersion. In motion it is the descent of 
the element; in amount it is partial. 

I. The question of motion. 

The evidence is conclusive from Scripture, that the 
renovating and sanctifying dispensation of God's Spirit, 
which ever is called baptism, is always expressed under 
the conception of its descent upon the subject. If other 
cases exist of spiritual operation, and for other purposes, 
those are never called baptism. 

1. In the promises of the Old Testament, both the 
sanctifying descent, and its representation by the sym- 
bol of water affusion, are abundantly asserted: "I will 
pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon 
the dry ground : I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, 
and my blessing upon thine offspring." Isa. xliv, 3. 
"Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye 
shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your 
idols, will I cleanse you. . . . And I will put my Spirit 
within you." Ezek. xxxvi, 25-27. "He saved us, hy 
the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy 
Ghost; which he shed on us abundantly." Titus iii, 
5, 6. Passages like these teach us, that, in both dis- 



The Double Baptism. 



219 



pensations, the sanctifying communication of God's 
Spirit existed, idiomatically expressed by descent, as 
indicating its origin from " God most high," and most 
appropriately represented to the eye under the symbol 
of water. 

2. This symbolism between the Spirit and the water 
is more definitely developed in the new covenant, un- 
der the form and title of the double baptism. Our text 
is but one of several reiterations by John of the same 
great announcement given by the different evangelists, 
not at different narrations of the same utterance, but as 
different utterances of the same great truth: "I indeed 
have baptized you with water: but he shall baptize you 
with the Holy Ghost, . . . He shall baptize you with 
the Holy Ghost and with fire." Mark iii, 8; Luke Hi, 16. 
The same declaration is ascribed to our Lord himself. 
There seem abundant proofs that baptism by water is 
the visible type of baptism by the Holy Spirit. The 
former baptism is the best possible sensible realization 
of the true conception of the latter. 

3. In every case which we have been able to find, 
from either our own researches or the quotations of im- 
mersionists, of baptism with the spiritual element, it is 
represented not as the descent of the subject into the 
element, but a descent of the element upon the subject. 
Thus, when Peter was addressing the company of Cor- 
nelius, "the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard;" 
and even "on the Gentiles also was poured out the 
gift of the Holy Ghost . . . Then answered Peter, Can 
any man forbid water, that these should not be bap- 
tized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as 
we?" Acts x, 44-47. The holy, spiritual baptism is 
here, indeed, said to be received; but it has just been 
called " a gift poured." To be the recipient was, there- 
fore, to be the subject of affusion. To "receive" "the 



220 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



poured-out gift," and to be baptized with water, are 
made necessary parallels. If they had " received " one, 
nobody could " forbid " the other. This implication 
Peter, in his subsequent recital, explicitly affirms: " The 
Holy Ghost fell on them, as on us at the beginning. 
Then remembered I the word [not of John, but] of the 
Lord, . . . John indeed baptized with water ; but ye 
shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost." Acts xi, 15, 16. 
Thus Peter expressly pronounces the outpouring and 
the falling of the Holy Ghost to be baptism. 

The most signal fulfillment of our text was at the day 
of Pentecost, when they were baptized " with the Holy 
Ghost, and with fire." The question whether the amount 
of these elements was sufficient to be an immersion, we 
postpone. But that they were affused, Peter express- 
ly declares: "This is that . . . spoken by the prophet 
Joel; ... I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh." 
Acts ii, 16, 17. The outpourings of the Spirit, then 
named even in the Old Testament, were baptisms. And 
he adds, " Be baptized every one of you, . . . .and ye 
shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." Did mortal 
man ever talk of receiving an element in which he was 
submerged ? Besides, as we have already noticed, " the 
gift of the Holy Ghost was poured out." 

Twice has God made spiritual baptism really or em- 
blematically visible; nnd both times it was by descent. 
The baptism of fire (being to the Spirit what lightning 
is to electricity, its visible manifestation) was certainly 
by descent: " There appeared unto them cloven tongues 
like as of fire, and it sat upon ench of them." The 
tongues were above them ; for a sitting object is neces- 
sarily above the object sat upon. Otherwise it would 
be said, that the tongues hung to, not sat upon them. 
Immersion or hot, this was a descent. Visible spiritual 
baptism again took place at the river to Jesus, when 



The Double Baptism. 



221 



"the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the 
Spirit of Goo descending like a dove, and lighting 
upon him" Here, then, the Spirit itself, not its emblem, 
was seen, visibly moving in space, baptismally descend- 
ing upon the Saviour. When God shows us how he 
baptizes, the element descends upon the subject. 

These are our passages in proof of our proposition. 
The cleansing or sanctifying operations of God upon 
man are alone called baptism; and when represented as 
baptism, are presented under the conception of descent. 

We now refute the objections to this argument. 

1. Irrelevant it is to quote against us texts express- 
ing other operations of the Spirit than his cleansing 
process, and which are, therefore, presented under other 
conceptions and images than affusion, or of water, in 
any mode. With these, baptism has nothing to do. 
Such images as these, "to drink into one Spirit" (1 Cor. 
xii, 13), breathing (John xx, 22), blowing (Acts ii, 2, 4), 
anointing (2 Cor. i, 21), voice (1 Kings xix, 12), express 
no operation of which baptism is the symbol, and have, 
therefore, nothing to do with this discussion. Never, 
are these modes or operations called the baptism of the 
Holy Spirit, which affusion alone is. Yet all these (ex- 
cept " blowing," which we shall subsequently dispose 
of) express a partial recipiency upon the person, and 
would all be properly emblemed by the partial effusion 
of a common symbolical element upon the subject. 

2. "This opinion," we are told, "teaches that God is 
material;" whereas, "we cannot have him poured on 
us. Baptism, whatever be the mode, cannot represent 
either the manner of conveying the Spirit, or his oper- 
ations on the soul. This error is as dishonorable to 
God as that of the Anthropomorphites." * 

* This, and most of the arguments of immersionists alluded to in 
this sermon, are found in the writings of Alexander Carson. 



222 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



Surely, remarks like these are innocent, only when 
they are ignorant. (1.) How does this presumptuous 
objector know that God can make no movement in 
space, no approximation to, and no descent upon, the 
human soul ? God can move in space if God can oc- 
cupy space; if he does not occupy space, he is nowhere; 
and if nowhere, he is nothing — and thus the objec- 
tor is a virtual atheist. (2.) How dares the objector 
contradict the Scripture, which saith, Jesus " saw the 
Spirit descending /" not the emblem, but " the Spirit.'' 1 
(3.) The resemblance on which the figure is founded, we 
are told, lies not between pouring water and " the op- 
erations of the Spirit on the soul," but between immer- 
sion in water and "the effects of the influences of the 
Spirit." But the soul is spirit as well as is God ; and 
effects, operated by the Spirit of God on the human 
spirit, are performed operations by the one, and expe- 
rienced operations in the other; and those experiences 
are themselves spiritual operations ; and if spirit's oper- 
ations cannot be represented by pouring water, how can 
they be represented by plunging into water ? If we 
materialize God, the objector materializes God and the 
soul. (4.) But our view does not in any respect ma- 
terialize God at all, any more than the objector's own. 
It is not, unless we choose, " founded on the error that 
there is a literal pouring of his Spirit." It only affirms 
that the best possible conception of the ineffable opera- 
tion of his cleansing Spirit, either in thought or in lan- 
guage ; and therefore, in visible symbol, is that of pour- 
ing. Just as the best conception of the inconceivable 
repose of God at the close of creation, both in thought 
and language, is rest (the Hebrew word, sabbath, sig- 
nifies rest), and is, therefore, best symbolized by the 
weekly repose of our voluntary muscles ; just so the in- 
conceivable sanctifying baptism of God's Spirit is best 



The Double Baptism. 



223 



symbolized by the affusion of physical water. In both 
cases it is undeniable, that a mode of God's Spirit is 
represented by a visible operation; and both, or neither, 
materialize God. The objection of the Deist to the for- 
mer is the very objection of the immersionist to the 
latter. It is the very purpose and beauty of a symbol 
to make visible the best conception of the invisible. 
(5.) Of a spiritual operation, the ceremonial representa- 
tion would be a visible symbol y the name would be a 
verbal symbol y and the conception a mental symbol. 
God's operations are as really symbolized by each of the 
three, as by either of the three. Scripture, therefore, as 
much materializes God, by calling his operations pour- 
ing, as by commanding us to signify those operations 
by water affusion or immersion. In predicating of the 
Spirit, even the term, operation (which is a physical 
term), the objector as much materializes God as if he 
had represented those operations by immersion. In re- 
gard to his own being, God has forbidden it to be rep- 
resented in shape, lest our worship should forget him, 
and settle upon the idol ; but he has also, in some cases, 
directed us visibly to represent his operations, or else 
we have no sabbath. From these considerations we 
sustain the Scriptures, in declaring that water baptism 
is the figure of the literal descent of God's sanctifying 
Spirit upon us. 

3. But it is again objected, that "the pouring is 
no part of the baptism." "The baptism takes place 
after the pouring is over," and consists in the immer- 
sion which results. 

(1.) Very good. This surrenders the whole question, 
so far as the motion performed is concerned. It is not ? 
then, necessary that the subject should descend into the 
element — the element may descend upon the subject; 
the word does not always, then, signify to dip or plunge y 



224 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



and immersion, after all, by concession, is performed by 
affusion ! Let this be well remembered when we come 
to discuss the amount. 

(2.) Apart from the question of amount, the case we 
have made out from Scripture is this: the term baptism 
is connected with no other mode of the Spirit's opera- 
tion but pouring; any other mode, or any other no-mode, 
is therefore unauthorized. Who, therefore, dares cut off 
this mode, even in idea, from the whole conception of 
Spirit baptism ? Granting that the innate meaning of 
baptism does not of itself express the whole process: 
countless words in all languages express but a part of 
the object for which they stand, and take in the whole 
only by implication. Granting that the bare word /3an- 
ti^g) does not, lexically, express more than the amount, 
who dares affirm that it does not include, by implica- 
tion, that mode with which Scripture inseparably asso- 
ciates it ? 

(3.) Water baptism, in order to be a visible symbol of 
the Scripture picture of spiritual baptism, must represent 
three ideas: 1. Origination of the Spirit's influence in 
and from God, "I will pour out," etc.; 2. That man 
is the subject; and, 3. The transmission from God to 
man. And as nearly all Scripture, and all language, 
and all mental conception, represent God above and 
man below, so this transmission is by descent. Pour- 
ing alone (or sprinkling, which is merely moderate 
pouring) expresses these three, and is, therefore, the 
only adequate symbol. Immersion gives not God the 
glory; nothing comes from above. All comes to the 
candidate horizontally, and nothing vertically; all from 
man, and nothing from heaven. It is all self-conver- 
sionism. It may express one's own moral reforma- 
tion, but not God's regeneration. It looks the very 
child of Pharisaism. By its own claim, it represents 



The Double Baptism. 



225 



only " effects" and atheistically acknowledges no 
cause. 

We have done with this part of our subject. By the 
uniform language of Scripture, by the symbols and in- 
stances divinely presented, by the concession of immer- 
sionists, and by the reason of the case, we have shown 
that the real, the divine, the model baptism, is by pour- 
ing. From the question of motion we proceed to 

II. The question of amount. Is the entiee per- 
son ENVELOPED BY THE ELEMENT ? 

In every instance, without exception, the reverse is 
the fact. This will appear, both from the language of 
Scripture, and by the divine visible presentations of the 
process. 

1. The Scripture language. Instead of representing 
the person inclosed within the element, Scripture de- 
clares the element to be inclosed within the subject. 
Nor is the subject represented as soaked or saturated 
like a sponge, but as receiving and containing like a 
vessel. "We have this treasure in earthen vessels; " 
"vessels of mercy," "vessels of wrath." So Ezekiel: 
" I will sprinkle clean water upon you . . . and put my 
Spirit within you." No one would talk of putting clean 
water within a sponge; and the term sprinkle expresses 
an amount decisive against immersion. " Be not drunk 
with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the 
Spirit." Eph. v, 18. As the drinker contains the wine, 
instead of being plunged into it, or absorbing it as a 
sponge, so the Christian contains the Spirit, instead of 
being immersed into it. So the disciples "received" 
the Holy Ghost ; and Peter promised, " Be baptized, 
and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." Did 
any man ever "receive" the river or font by being 
plunged into it ? Not only was the " Spirit put within 
them and they " received " it, but they were " filled 
15 



226 Essays, Revieavs, and Discoueses. 



with the Holy Ghost." A vessel, however perfectly 
filled, is not thereby immersed. This is the uniform 
and only phraseology of Scripture upon this point ; and 
when we add that the process, by these phrases, is pre- 
ceded and produced by pouring, it seems a moral impos- 
sibility to reconcile that process with the idea of immer- 
sion. If so, (3a7TTi^o) does not always signify immerse 
in the New Testament. 

2. The baptismal dove. The Holy Spirit, at the bap- 
tism of Jesus, " descended in bodily shape like a dove 
upon him." Was this immersion in the Holy Spirit ? 
Was he plunged into the dove ? Had the Spirit made 
itself visible as a luminous vapor, and wrapped him 
round, even without a downward plunge into it, we 
would admit immersion; but since the amount of the 
Spirit is limited by the outline of the " bodily shape " 
of a dove, the idea of immersion is absolutely impos- 
sible — and this is impossibility number second. 

3. The baptism of fire. There was no immersion, 
either of the Spirit, or of the emblems of the Spirit, 
or of fire, on the day of Pentecost. It is said, " There 
came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty 
wind, and it filled all the house where they were sit- 
ting." From this, there is much loose talk of an im- 
mersion in a "wind," and in "a sound," as "the em- 
blems of the Spirit." But, first, these were not " the 
emblems of the Spirit." They were merely the indi- 
cations of the Spirit's presence, just as the concussion 
of the air is the indication of the lightning's presence, 
being as effect to cause. Even if "a wind" did sweep 
them, and "« sound" fill every ear in the room, it is 
egregious burlesque to call this, forsooth, the baptism 
of the Spirit. Second, it is not said there was a " wind; " 
there was a sound resembling the sound of wind; but 
who knows there was any wind ? No living mortal. 



The Double Baptism. 



227 



But they were immersed in u a sound ! V We will treat 
this nonsense with all patience. Sound, then, is the 
sensible effect of the vibration of air upon the tympanum 
of the ear; it can cover or immerse just the surface of 
that little tympanum with the sensation, and no more; 
we say that a room is " filled " with sound when every 
ear is filled with the sensation; but to talk of immers- 
ing the whole person with the sensation is physical 
absurdity. It is just partial affusion. 

But the baptism of fire. Allow the immersion of 
" wind " and " sound," if you wish; were they immersed 
in fire ? Impossible. The element was no larger in 
amount than an ordinary tongue, and how could a man 
be immersed in a tongue ? We coolly label this, impos- 
sibility the third — the tliird demonstration that (3a7TTl£(*), 
in the New Testament, does not s'gnify to immerse. 

And here, if nowhere else, we deem ourselves impreg- 
nable. It cannot be said that the baptism of fire is 
merely a figure ; for it is a name affixed to an element 
and an operation just as visible as so much water or 
blood. It cannot be denied that this occasion was that 
of the baptism of fire ; for Jesus had bidden them wait 
at Jerusalem for this as the occasion (Acts i, 4, 5) of 
the fulfillment of the promise of the Father, in which 
the baptism of fire was included. It cannot be denied 
that the fire descended, for it first " appeared," and then 
" it sat upon them" It cannot be immersion ; for it is 
as plain as a geometrical demonstration could make it — 
if a man could not be inclosed in an ordinarily sized 
tongue, this was not immersion. Nor is this an ordinary 
barren case; it is an all-controlling model instance. 

In regard to this whole argument of amount, we are 
aware of but one poor evasion that immersionists have 
furnished. A few passages are quoted, having nothing 
to do with baptism, spiritual or symbolical, which speak 



228 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



of us as being in God. Thus: u In him we live, and 
move, and have our being." God does, indeed, surround 
good men and bad ; but this is not the baptism of the 
Spirit, nor is Christian baptism any figure of this. Per- 
sons in a state of spiritual perception, by which God 
reveals visions unto them, are sometimes said to be " in 
the Spirit." Thus John was "carried away in the 
Spirit " into the wilderness, and to a high mountain. 
Rev. xvii, 3; xxi, 10. He " saw a door opened in heaven," 
and " immediately I was in the Spirit," or in a state of 
spiritual perception. But this is no sanctif3 T ing opera- 
tion of the Spirit, and no prototype of water baptism. 
No more are " walking in the Spirit," " dwelling in God," 
baptismal images. They refer, not to the process of 
God's dispensing his Spirit, but to our walking and liv- 
ing in accordance with the dictates of that Spirit. And 
how do these expressions obviate the argument drawn 
from the visible baptismal dove and tongues of fire ? 

We have gone through the great subject of real bap- 
tism; but before taking up the subject of the symbolical, 
we may show the all-controlling force of the argument 
drawn from the former over the latter baptism. 

1. We settle the biblical, ritual use of the word. If 
the high grounds asserted by immersionists in regard 
to the sense of pa-rl^o), in the classics and lexicons, were 
sustainable, yet one instance of plain impossibility of its 
meaning immerse, will prove it to belong to that numer- 
ous class of words, in which the transfer to Christian 
institutions has changed the meaning from its classic 
use. The pulpit is hardly the place for verbal criti- 
cism; and, happily, upon this subject God has not left 
the unlearned brother at the mercy of heathen poets 
and learned lexicons. The Bible is its own dictionary; 
the Spirit is his own interpreter. He has made the thing 
visible — so visible, that he that hath eyes to see may see. 



The Double Baptism. 



229 



Logicians tell us that the best, nay, the only real defini- 
tion of a word, is to point to the object and apply the 
name. Point to a lamp, and say, "I call that a lamp;" 
and the word is incontrovertibly defined. Point to a 
man moving along your streets, and say, "I call that 
walking" and the definition is complete. Now God has 
thus defined the word in question. He poured out upon 
his Son, visibly and really — it was pouring, and it was 
not immersion — and he called it baptism. He poured 
out the tongue of fire -upon the disciples, visibly and 
really — it was pouring, and it was not immersion — and 
he called it baptism. Now it makes no difference in the 
mode what the element is. Whether water or fire, oil 
or vapor, matter or spirit, if in one case baptism does 
not necessarily mean immersion, it need not in another. 
But we « lo more than settle the extension of the term: for, 
2. We fix the form of the symbol. A formal symbol 
must, by its very form, express its reality. Otherwise 
it is no symbol at all. The very purpose of a visible 
formal symbol is, to represent to the human mind an 
idea of some unseen reality. If it does not do this, it 
is no symbol, but an arbitrary mummery. Now God 
has twice made that reality visible. But the picture 
must conform to the original, or it is no picture; -the 
copy, to be a copy, must correspond to the pattern. 
"See that thou make all things according to the pat- 
tern showed to thee in the mount." And what was the 
pattern " shown thee " at the Pentecost, and at the riv- 
er, where God himself baptized ? With God's word in 
my hand, and against an opposing world, I were forced 
to reiterate, "It was pouring, and it was not immer- 
sion." This is the way Christ baptizeth; and the Chris- 
tian may well answer, when told that pouring is not 
baptism, " This is the way my God baptized me, and 
this is the way my minister shall." 



230 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



And this argument remains the same, should we even 
concede that the application of the term baptism to the 
spiritual affusion is figurative. The things must con- 
form, whatever you do with the name. The symbolical 
thing must be the picture of the real thing. 

3. We secure one great law of interpretation. As the 
spiritual process is called baptism, and that baptism is 
by affusion, and in both name and form is the type of 
water baptism, so, in all cases of water baptism, the mean- 
ing of the term, and the conception of the process, must, 
in accordance with the type, be affusion. We have a 
perfect right to say that, ritually, baptism means, and 
would correctly, in every case, be translated, affusion. 
To ask, in any passage of Scripture, whether the bap- 
tism is by affusion or immersion, is to ask whether the 
affusion is by affusion or immersion. 

II. SYMBOLICAL BAPTISM. 

We divide this part of our subject into two parts, 
namely, baptisms in the Old Testament and baptisms 
in the New. 

I. Baptisms in the Old Testament. 

We have here to prove, first, that there were various 
personal baptisms imposed by Moses; and, second, that 
none of these were by immersion. 

1. There were various baptisms imposed by Moses, and 
those so called were personal. 

St. Paul tells us, that the Mosaic ritual "stood in 
meats, and drinks, and divers baptisms (Greek, dtatyoooie 
fiairTLOfiolc), and carnal ordinances, imposed on them 
until the time of reformation," under Christ. There 
were divers or various baptisms then under the old dis- 
pensation. These baptisms were personal, as may be 
shown. 

(1.) From a correct translation of the passage. Pro- 



The Double Baptism. 



231 



feasor Stuart's is as follows: "Meats, and drinks, and 
divers washings — ordinances pertaining to the flesh." 
This means that the meats, drinks, and baptisms were all 
included, as ordinances pertaining to the flesh or body. 
The baptisms were, therefore, personal. (2.) From 
the apostles argument. He contrasts the efficacy of the 
blood of Christ, conceptually applied to the person, 
with the inefficacy of these various baptisms visibly 
applied to the person, in purifying the conscience. 
(3.) Immersions there were of cups, etc.; but these were 
not for the purpose of cleansing the conscience, but to 
render those things "fit for the use of a clean person. 
These, therefore, could not have been contrasted with 
the blood of Christ, nor included in the various bap- 
tisms. Those baptisms were, therefore, purely per- 
sonal. 

2. These Ci various baptisms" then, were "imposed;" 
and they were personal: we must now walk through 
the Old Testament, and show that none of the personal 
baptisms were immersion. 

We prepare the way, by one sweeping affirmation, 
that the Hebrew word for immerse is not once used in 
the commands which impose the modes of these "vari- 
ous baptisms." The English words are, sprinkle, wash, 
bathe, neither of which imposed the specific mode, 
immersion. If, in performing the command, the will- 
worship of the Jew selected that mode, it was the 
Jew who chose, not God who " imposed" the mode. 
Washing, when its purpose is, not physical, but sym- 
bolical cleanness, requires not totality. The word 
rendered bathe simply signifies to wash. Even with 
the bad rendering, " bathe," a false idea will not be 
received by those who are aware that in the East bath- 
ing is performed, not by immersion, but by affusion.* 
* See Bush's Scripture Illustrations, p. 473. 



232 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 

We specify some of these " various baptisms," " im- 
posed " by Moses. 

There was the baptism of the priests (Exod. xxix, 
4, 21) expressive of peculiar sanctity. At the door of 
the tabernacle of the congregation, Moses was to wash 
with water, and sprinkle, with blood and oil, Aaron 
and his sons. 

There was the baptism of the Levites. He was to 
" sprinkle water of purifying upon them — and let them 
wash their clothes, and so make themselves clean." 

There was the baptism of the lepeks. The priest 
was to make a brush of cedar and hyssop, tied with a 
scarlet thread, and, dipping the brush into the blood of 
a slain bird, sprinkle it upon the leper seven times. 

There was the water of separation, or purification, 
after the preparing of which " the priest shall wash his 
clothes and shall bathe himself in water." "The puri- 
fying of the Jews" was performed (John ii, 6), with 
water-pots containing six or eight gallons. 

There was the cleansing from a dead man. Whoever 
touched a corpse was unclean, and if he did not purify 
himself, was to be cut off, " because the water of puri- 
fication was not sprinkled upon him." To this the 
word baptizo is expressly applied in the Greek of the 
Apocrypha. 

There was the baptism of all the people. When 
Moses had spoken every precept to all the people, ac- 
cording to the law, he took the blood of calves and of 
goats, with water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and 
sprinkled both the book and all the people. (Was not 
similar John's baptism of " all Judea ? ") 

Such were the "various baptisms imposed" by the 
Mosaic law. None of them was immersion. If the 
Jews made immersion of them, it would be an insult 
to inspiration to suppose, that St. Paul should inaccu- 



The Double Baptism. 



233 



rately represent the practices of men as "imposed" by- 
God. But it is difficult to believe that in the arid des- 
ert, in which, for forty years, the Israelites wandered, 
where, at the present day, the Mohammedan Arab rubs 
sand for water upon his body, as his sacred ablution, 
they could have expended water in voluntary religious 
immersions. We have thus upon this question swept 
the Old Testament clear; there were various baptisms, 
but no immersions. 

Let not the importance of Old Testament baptism, 
nor its identity with that of the New, be undervalued. 
The one great purpose of all religion, pervading the 
whole system of revelation, the cleansing and renewing 
marts depraved nature, by the dispensation of God's 
Spirit from on high, is the one great idea which the en- 
tire system of water lustrations in both Testaments rep- 
resents. The complexity of a former dispensation re- 
quired that they should be various; the simplicity of 
the new condensed them down to one, and that one to 
occupy the initiatory place of abolished circumcision. 

fn the four hundred years between the Old Testament 
and the New, the Jewish rabbis invented the baptism of 
converts to the faith; and that baptism was expressed 
by the Hebrew word for immersion, and doubtless by 
the unchanged classic pan-ifa. Forty years before 
Christ, at least, proselyte immersion was a topic of de- 
bate in the Hebrew schools. We have, then, in this in- 
terval, placed, side by side, the divine institution of 
affusion and sprinkling, and the human invention of 
convert immersion. If immersion is true, Jesus Christ, 
the great denouncer of human traditions, added to the 
divine, did reject the divine, and adopt into his own 
system one of those very traditions, namely, convert 
immersion. Omitting those modes which the word of 
God " imposed," as significant of his " outpouring " and 



284 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



his cleansing, he imported, from the Jewish rabbis, a 
mode, which, as before said, gives not God the glory, and 
bears the lineaments of Pharisaic parentage in its face. 

The Greek word, fiaTrTifa, introduced to express con- 
vert immersion, would naturally become applied, ver- 
nacularly, to express any sacred ablution. And accord- 
ingly we find it incontestably applied, in the Greek of 
the Apocrypha, to designate the sprinkling of the man 
contaminated by a corpse. Sirach xxxiv, 25. When 
John the Baptist came, it was, doubtless, then the most 
obvious vernacular word for him to appropriate, both to 
the real purification by the Holy Spirit and its visible 
symbol of outpoured water. 

We enter the New Testament, then, with the full 
consciousness that the burden of proof lies upon the 
immersionist. He cannot say that the word, in its sa- 
cred use, secures the presumption in his favor, for we 
have repeatedly proved it to mean affusion. We addi- 
tionally claim that it is for him to prove that affusion of 
the Holy Spirit is visibly imaged by immersion f At the 
threshold of the New Testament we have a right to 
stand still and say to him, " Prove your immersionism." 
Failure in any point is demonstration against him. 

II. New Testament Baptisms. 

These we divide into three kinds: baptism irrespect- 
ive of locality; in-door baptism; and out-door baptism. 

1. J3ap)tism irrespective of locality. There are allu- 
sions to baptism, founded on resemblance. When bap- 
tism is compared to the passage of the cloud and the 
sea — to the flood — and to a burial, much wild allegoriz- 
ing would be saved, if it were first inquired and settled, 
in what point the resemblance lay. The resemblance 
may be in the form, in the element, in the nature, in the 
import, or in the spiritual prototype. Commentators 
and controversialists, neglecting this, have, on both 



The Double Baptism. 



235 



sides, run into fancied parallelisms, and always in the 
form, of course; both sides have been equally extrava- 
gant and about equally successful. The true commenta- 
tor will ask, In what does the intended resemblance lie ? 
And judging the intention, first, by the demands of the 
argument, and, second, by the precise amount of the 
words, he will utterly repudiate any addition of others' 
gratuitous nonsense to the apostle's expressed sense. 

Thus when the Israelites are said to be "baptized 
unto Moses, in the cloud and in the sea," in what does 
the argument require the resemblance to lie? Plainly 
in the import of baptism, namely, consecration. The 
argument is, though the Israelites were consecrated to 
Moses by the miraculous deliverance through the sea, 
and the relief of the cloud, yet they rebelled against 
him ; so we, baptismally consecrated to Christ, may 
rebel against him and be lost. This sense the phrase 
" baptized into " a person or thing requires, meaning, 
as it always does, consecrated to its object. Now this 
argument is equally valid, whatever be the form. And 
though the water of the sea may have suggested the 
term baptism, we have no belief that the apostle, in 
thought, called up the form. 

Yet, if we must run out the parallel of form, the affu- 
sionist will have, by a chance trifle, the advantage. 
That nice immersion formed, by the sea on each side, 
and the cloud overhead, has only existed in sprightly 
fancy; for, in fact, the cloud was behind, not above, the 
Israelites, in their passage through the sea. Immersion 
there was not; for they passed over on "dry ground." 
Affusion there may have been; for a strong wind ex- 
isted, to produce a spray. As for the cloud at the sea, 
it seems to have been a dry one; and neither immer- 
sion nor affusion can be extracted from it. A passage 
in Judges v, 4, however, in describing something very 



236 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



like this scene, says, "the heavens dropped, the clouds 
also dropped water." 

The passage, 1 Pet. iii, 21, has been overlaid with 
various strata of commentary. Just so far as the apos- 
tle asserts, we will admit; not a syllable further. Hav- 
ing told us that in the ark " few persons were saved 
by water," he adds, " the antitype whereunto, namely > 
baptism, doth now save us," cautiously superadding 
that still the baptism must not be merely symbolical, 
but real. Now this is all. Water of the flood inci- 
dentally suggests water of baptism. Noah was saved 
by one, as the occasional cause; we are saved by the 
other, as the occasional, spiritual baptism being the es- 
sential cause. Now if any one will run out a parallel 
touching the ark sprinkled, or the ark immersed, both 
will measurably succeed, and both will partially fail. 
The affusionist will not be able to deny that both 
shower above and flood beneath will make a compound 
immersion; and the immersionist, with all his force, 
will not be able to make the necessary submerging 
plunge of the ark into the depths of the water. 

But the immersionist lights upon the phrase, " buried 
with him by baptism " (Rom. vi, 4, and Col. ii, 12, in 
baptism), and cries, " JZvprjica; here the allusion must be 
to the form " Yet we fearlessly affirm that the allu- 
sion to the form is unproved, unnecessary, and improb- 
able. 

The apostle is enforcing the duty of the Christian to 
be holy. He does this by a threefold parallel between 
the Christian's repentance, church profession, and sanc- 
tih* cation, and Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. 
Thus, 

Renunciation ) Baptismal peo- ) Holt life is 



death, 



OP 



SIN 



IS 



FESSION IS BU- 



EIAL, 




The Double Baptism. 



237 



I. Death. Renunciation of sin is death to sin. "How 
shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein ? " 
Verse 2. As Christ, in death, closed his sensibilities to 
all the wicked world around him, so the Christian, in 
repentance, closes his sensibilities to the world, the 
flesh, and the devil. Thus is made out the image of 
death. Changing the numerical order, we explain 
next 

III. The Resurrection. As holiness is a new life, 
and resurrection is a new life, so in this threefold paral- 
lel, sanctification is resurrection. Like as Christ was 
raised up from the dead, even so we also should walk in 
newness of life. The parallel is chiefly verbal; but as 
his purpose is, not reasoning, but illustration, it accom- 
plishes its object. 

II. The Burial. Where the death is repentance, 
and the resurrection is sanctification, what now is the 
intermediate burial ? A cool deposit of the body under 
water ! Immeasurable bathos ! But we object not to 
the solecism in the rhetoric; we denounce the heresy in 
the theology. It gives to corporeal motion a supersti- 
tious value. It makes our conformity to Christ's burial 
consist in a mere horizontal position of body. It is the 
very essence of popery. 

Again we ask, where the death is repentance, and the 
resurrection sanctification, what is the intermediate 
burial ? Most persons would, we think, answer, A Chris- 
tian profession. And this is by baptism. Baptism, 
whatever be its mode, is the act of professed dedica- 
tion to the Trinity, consecration to Christianity, and 
embodiment into the Church. As Christ was buried 
from the scenes of external nature into the tomb, so 
the Christian, in baptismal dedication, is buried from 
the world into Christ's body, the Church. Thus, what- 
ever is the form of the mere rite, repentance is the 



238 Essays, Reviews, and Disco ueses. 



death, baptism is the burial, and holiness the resurrec- 
tion. 

Yet if the corporeal allusion be still insisted on, and 
must be conceded, we affirm, it makes nothing for im- 
mersion. Deposit a body in the grave, and let it lie 
there forever — you have not buried it. Something 
must descend, be sprinkled, or poured upon it. Mean- 
time, if this one phrase of burying must exert so all- 
controlling a power in modifying the form of baptism, 
those numerous passages which describe a baptism by 
God's "outpouring" must and shall have a little om- 
nipotence in them, too. If one must be satisfied, both 
shall be satisfied. Nay, more ; if this comparatively 
casual allusion must be regarded, the great instituted 
relation of the symbol to its reality shall immeasurably 
predominate. The burying shall be by pouring. If 
either rule, the pouring is a thousand- fold the master. 
If any one object, that the sprinkling of a few drops of 
water cannot be the burial of a whole man, we answer, 
The apostle was too good a scholar and too great a 
traveler to be ignorant, that the Romans, to whose cap- 
ital he was writing, held that a little dust, thrice sprink- 
led, was ritually considered a complete burial. Sym- 
bols ever incline to be abridgments; and we ought to 
be better philosophers than to demand, or to suppose 
that human nature demands, that emblems must math- 
ematically fill out the complete dimensions of their 
objects. Besides, the objector little realizes the vivid- 
ness of the apostle's allusions. In the very preceding 
verse (Col. ii, 11) he makes circumcision " a putting off 
the body of the sins of the flesh." Now if he could 
magnify the minute operation of the circumcision-knife, 
cutting but a single fiber, into a severing of a whole 
" body,'''' then he could easily magnify a drop upon a 
man's head into a burial of his whole person. Finally, 



The Double Baptism. 



239 



the apostle expressly says it was by affusion. For we 
have abundantly proved that in the New Testament 
ritual, baptism means affusion. The phrase should be 
translated, " buried with him by affusion ; 99 and to ask 
whether it be by affusion, is to ask whether affusion is 
affusion. 

2. Out- door baptisms. 

In this class of cases, the immersionist can avail him- 
self of a very unfair advantage arising from the differ- 
ent habits of different climates. We are to transport 
ourselves to a torrid clime, where sleeping in the open 
air, living in the desert unsheltered, and free familiar- 
ity with water in all seasons are customary, and often a 
luxury. Accustomed to polished calfskins and delicate 
prunellas, to wet which is often inconvenient and un- 
healthy, we forget that the Jews with their sandals (a 
mere shaped shingle, strapped upon the sole of the foot) 
would step into the water, almost unconsciously, on all 
occasions possible. To wash the feet was ever a relief 
and pleasure; and they would not, like a northerner, 
carefully stop at the water edge. They would baptize, 
whether by sprinkling or by immersion, in the river. 
Just as the ceremony is, in reality, engraved in the most 
ancient pictures extant, the humble candidate would 
kneel in the river, where both administrator and sub- 
ject would have gone, and there would be performed 
the symbol of the outpouring of the Spirit and the pen- 
tecostal fire. 

The cases are three — 1. John's baptism; 2. Baptism 
of Christ; 3. The eunuch. 

(1.) John's baptism. It is just what we might expect 
of the great itinerant field-preacher, to whom all Judea 
resorted, that he should baptize, whether by immersion 
or affusion, " in the river." We need not be obliged to 
avail ourselves of the fact, that the Jordan had double 



2-iO Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



banks, and that a man may stand "in the river," on dry- 
ground. We will hold, most religiously, that he walked 
with his candidate not only into the river, but into the 
water; ami what did he there? He tells us himself, 
that he was to be followed by Him who was to " sprin- 
kle all nations ; " and that his own water baptism was 
but the type of his great outpouring of the /Spirit and 
the fire. 

There are great difficulties in believing, that when 
Luke tells us of John, that "all the people were bap- 
tized;" and Mark, that " there went out unto him all the 
land of Judea, and they of Jerusalem;" and Matthew, 
more than all, that there " went out to him Jerusalem, 
and all Judea, and all the region, round about Jordan," 
the whole could have been immersed. These mass meet- 
ings must have consisted of millions; and no wonder 
John should, in a thirsty land, have sought a place of 
"many waters." It has been safely calculated that if 
one half the masses here named were immersed, John 
must have immersed nearly forty a minute ; * and that, 
too, allowing them time for " confessing their sins." We 
may fairly label this, impossibility number fourth. 

(2.) Baptism of Christ. Brevity obliges, and the ad- 
vantage of our position enables, us to present two con- 
cessions to the immersionist. Let him have, what he 
could not maintain, his Greek prepositions and his no- 
priesthood of Christ. Jesus went down into the water 
and came up out of the water. But what was done 
while in the water ? Just that baptism was performed 
between the banks, with the element of water, which 
was performed on the bank, with the element Spirit. 
"The Holy Ghost, descending in a bodily shape like 
a dove," did not immerse him; nor did the water im- 
itation of it. 

* Hibbard's Christian Baptism, p. 23. 



The Double Baptism. 



241 



(3.) The Ethiopian eunuch. The Ethiopian was read- 
ing that description of the Messiah (in our version un- 
happily cut in two by the chapters), which promises, 
"So shall he sprinkle all nations;' 1 a promise verified 
by the command, " Go, baptize all nations." Accord- 
ingly, when the thing had been explained to him we see 
why, at the close of Philip's exposition, he feels, as one 
of all nations, he is a claimant of sprinkled baptism. 
We fling in to the immersionist his preposition, and give 
him his strongest ground, and what can he make of it? 
They both went down (from the chariot) into the wa- 
ter, and came up (to the chariot) out of the water. 
Whether they went far enough into the water to sub- 
merge Philip's sandals is not said; but we venture to 
believe that an Arab, or a southern Jew, would snatch 
the luxury of a knee-deep walk into the fresh element, 
whether to pour or to sprinkle his kneeling candidate. 
They went then, at least, knee-deep, nnd what then was 
done? Read no further, and no mortal could tell. But 
whatever he did, he performed (the verification of the 
promise to "sprinkle all nations") the symbol of the 
affusion of the Spirit. 

3. In-door baptism. 

By in-door baptism we mean those baptisms, the 
whole narrative of which places and leaves them in 
some house. And now we say it is a strong negative 
evidence against immersion, that not once, in all these 
instances, is it mentioned either that they went out, or 
that any preparation or apparatus was provided within. 
Did the word of itself express immersion, still, in the 
many cases, we should reasonably expect that some nat- 
ural explanation would once be dropped, in a book so 
remarkable for its minute detail of individual transac- 
tions as the Bible, showing how, in difficult circum- 
stances, the immersion was effected. Not once does it 
16 



242 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



occur. The most natural air possible, of the thing be- 
ing done instanter, and on the spot ; if out-doors, out- 
doors ; if in-doors, within. Baths and cisterns, so ex- 
tensively manufactured in modern times, for ancient 
use, are mentioned not once in the whole New Testa- 
ment. Other vessels or " pots," expressly made for the 
purifications of the Jews by water affusion, there were; 
but these " pots " contained but two or three firkins, 
some six or eight gallons, apiece; good proof that, in 
our Saviour's time, the lustral rites, the "various bap- 
tisms," "imposed until the time of reformation," were 
not by immersion. 

(I.) Our first argument will consist of an assemblage 
of texts. We have just shown that, in our Saviour's 
time, the Jews performed the Mosaic baptisms or puri- 
fication by water, with " water-pots " containing six or 
eight gallons; another impossibility of immersion. That 
these " purifications " were called "various baptisms," 
not by St. Paul alone, is evident from John iii, 22-27. 
The facts are, John and Jesus were baptizing; a dis- 
pute arose between their disciples about purifying ; 
John's disciples came and told him that Jesus's baptism 
was prevailing ; John told them it ought to prevail. 
Nothing but utter captiousness will deny, here, that 
baptism is called purifying; for a dispute about purify- 
ing is identified as a dispute about baptism. Put bap- 
tism in the place of purifying, and a coherent story is 
produced. Deny this identity, and all coherency is de- 
stroyed. But among these baptisms or purifications, 
"all the Jews" performed a baptism upon their own 
persons, every time they came from the market, as well 
as upon the couches (English, tables ; Mark vii, 4) on 
whicli several persons often reclined at meals. Here, 
then, we have immersions of men, and couches larger 
than men, with no other vessel supplied than eight-gal- 



The Double Baptism. 



243 



Ion pots. The immersion of couches at all is unsustained 
by any authority (the statement of Maimonides is ten 
centuries too late), and may be pronounced a fair im- 
possibility. 

(2.) The penteeostal baptism. That twelve persons, 
in some eight hours, should immerse three thousand 
unprepared strangers, is a physical impossibility. 
That a scene so hurried and little solemn should 
take place, under apostolic authority, is, to say the 
least, morally improbable. Such are the difficulties in 
regard to time. 

But equal difficulties regard the place. The Kedron, 
in June, was dry and filthy; the pools distant or small. 
Besides, the scenes of the crucifixion had lately trans- 
pired ; and nothing but a miracle, which we are unau- 
thorized to suppose, would have rendered the public 
notoriety of an immersion of so many safe. Finally, 
but an hour ago had occurred the visible baptism of 
fire, performed by the limited descent of the element, 
a^ the type / how, then, would the inspired apostles per- 
form the baptism of water to render it the antitype? 
Peter had just said that the spiritual baptism was " shed 
forth;" would he have pronounced a water baptism, 
"shed forth," no baptism? 

(3.) Saul. Three days had he been sunk in feeble- 
ness and fasting, when he " arose and was baptized," 
and then " received meat and was strengthened." 
Strange, that where every movement is detailed with 
wonderful minuteness, no going forth in his weak state 
to a river could have been mentioned ! The whole air 
of it is that he just stood up from his prostration, in or- 
der to be baptized while upon his feet. 

(4.) The Gentiles with Cornelius. "'Then Peter an- 
swered, Can any man forbid water, that these should 
not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost, 



244 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



as well as we?" God had just (two verses previous) 
" poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost " upon them ; 
why should not be " poured out the gift " of water bap- 
tism ? Who could " forbid," or prevent, the approxi- 
mation of the latter to those who had " received " the 
former ? The whole construction of Peter's question is 
so casually natural, on the hypothesis of the application 
of the water to the person, instead of the person to the 
water, as to insinuate conviction into the inmost mind. 
The real and the symbolical are here most strikingly 
paralleled. 

(5.) The jailer'' 8 family. There were an inner prison 
and an outer prison, and the jailer's residence, all, prob- 
ably, in one inclosure. The jailer " brought them out " 
of the inner to the common prison, where they spoke 
unto him the word of the Lord with all his family, who 
were doubtless called, by the excitement of the earth- 
quake and outcry, to the spot. There, in the outer 
prison, they must have been baptized, for it was not 
until after the baptism that the jailer "brought them 
into his house." That they were in any other place, 
there is no divine authority for saying. The baptism, 
then, on the face of the record, could not have been 
immersion. 

Two spurious interpolations have, however, been in- 
serted into the narrative in order to make an immersion. 
One places a tank in the jail. The other invents a 
journey to the river Strymon. Now the burden of the 
proof lies upon the immersionist. If a man say, Here 
is murder, he must show all the requisite circumstances 
of murder. If he say, Here is immersion, he must 
prove, not assume, the requisites of an immersion. He 
must make out, not a possibility, nor a supposition, but 
a certainty, or it was not immersion. But the certainty 
lies on the other side. 



The Double Baptism. 



245 



(a) There was no tank or bath in the jail. A bath 
in a Roman prison ? A piano in Bridewell as much ! 
Philippi was not in Burmah, nor Palestine, but in north- 
ern Greece, in the very latitude of " snowy Thrace. " 
Truly, the humanity that could thrust the innocent 
apostles, all bloody with wounds, into the irons of the 
inner prison, was quite likely to provide a bath for the 
cleanliness and luxury of its victims ! 

(b) The apostles, the jailer, and all his family, took 
no trip at midnight to the Strymon. A city at the 
close of an earthquake is all uproar; and for the wife, 
etc., of the jailer, with his prisoners, to have gone forth, 
could have been safe only with a miracle. Besides, it 
is not to be supposed that a writer of sense would have 
omitted so extraordinary, as well as so essential, a link 
in the train. A midnight immersion in the cold Stry- 
mon, of wife and all, before going home, even for a 
change of garments, is an item well calculated to arrest 
both the writer's and reader's attention, and could not 
have been skipped. Further, we have even the faith of 
the apostles for it, that they did not go out. The au- 
thority of the magistrates had placed them in the inner 
prison, and the jailer had no more legal power to take 
them to the Strymon than to the Hudson. When, 
therefore, the apostles refused to go at the dismission 
of the magistrates, it was expressly asserting that they 
not only would not go, but had not gofie out from the 
legal custody of the magistrates. Their language, if 
they had once released themselves "privily" was based 
upon concealment and equivocation. The magistrates 
might have fairly replied, " With what face can these 
men pretend that they will not go out without our 
formal command, when they have already gone by the 
mere connivance of the jailer, and are now in prison 
only by voluntarily imprisoning themselves ? If the 



246 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



jailer's permit was sufficient for the Strymon, it is good 
to the Tiber." There was no leaving the prison, then; 
and there was no bath in the prison ; there was a bap- 
tism, but no immersion. This is a moral certainty. It 
closes our Scripture argument. 

But, it may be asked, was not immersion the practice 
of the first two centuries of the Christian Church ? No 
evidence of it whatever. Immersion, as a human inven- 
tion, among the Jews, we have already acknowledged 
to have existed anterior to our Saviour himself. Thence, 
aided by the tendencies of a southern climate, by the 
growing propensities of the Church toward superabun- 
dant rituals, and by the prevailing classic signification 
of the word baptizo, it became, with many other corrup- 
tions, prevalent in the Romish Church, in the form of 
immersion, naked, and three times repeated! Yet, the 
most satisfactory proofs exist of the earlier prevalence 
of sprinkling. In both the apostolic fathers, Barnabas 
(if genuine) and Hermas, the very earliest of uncanon- 
ical writers, clear allusions to baptismal sprinkling ex- 
ist. In Jusiin Martyr's Apology to the emperor, A.D. 
150, he avoids the use of the word baptizo, which the 
emperor might classically construe immersion, and uses 
the word Aovw, to wash ; while, in his other writings, 
he uses the word baptizo — a most remarkable indica- 
tion that the classic and sacred meanings of the word 
differed. In the Latin Church, the earliest translation 
of the Scriptures, made too early for historic record 
(emended by Jerome, 383, thence known as the Vul- 
gate), avoiding the word immersio, transfers unchanged 
the Greek baptizo — another clear indication that the 
two were not considered synonymous. The most an- 
cient pictorial delineations of baptism (as early, prob- 
ably, as the sixth century) represent the candidate as 
poured upon kneeling, while none exist of immer- 



The Double Baptism. 



247 



sion.* The monuments of the Greek Church represent 
Christ and John as standing in the water, and John pour- 
ing water on the head of Jesus. Coming into the land 
whose soil was trodden, and whose language, radically, 
was spoken, by Jesus himself, the testimony is abundant. 
The oldest known version of the New Testament, made 
not far from the close of the first century, the Syriac 
Peshito, as Profesor Stuart informs us, avoiding the 
Syriac word for immerse, uses a word signifying to make 
stand, or to confirm,; either because the candidate stood 
in receiving the rite, or because baptism confirms him 
in Christian profession. "The Apostolic Liturgy, so 
called in the Syriac, represents Christ as standing and 
bowing his head in the water." The missionary, Wolfe, 
informs us, that in that land of immutable customs, a 
sect of Syrian Christians, professing to be followers of 
John the Baptist, take their infants to the river and 
sprinkle them; assigning, as their reason, that John bap- 
tized at the river, by sprinkling. The churches of the 
Armenians, Syro- Jacobites, Copts, Abyssinians, and 
Syro-Chaldeans, improperly called Nestorians, placing 
the candidate in water to the neck pour water upon the 
head. Of the Greek Church it is said, that thirty-five 
out of forty-five millions hold, with the great body of 
both Protestants and Romanists, that the form is imma- 
terial. Affusion, therefore, has not only immeasurably 
the best support from Scripture, but a superior support 
from purest tradition, and a scarcely inferior from gen- 
eral consent. 

The argument, in compressed form, is before you. If 
we have fulfilled our expectation, we have demonstrated, 
from the affusion of the Spirit and the fire, that real bap- 
tism is not immersion ; we have thence developed the 

* For most of the following facts the authorities may be found in 
Cliapin's Primitive Church. 



248 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



great law of interpretation, which requires its symbol 
not to be immersion; we have accordingly traced the 
" various baptisms," " imposed " in the Old Testament, 
and found them not immersions; we have analyzed, 
hastily, the allusions and the narrations of the Xew 
Testament, and found in them no immersion; we have 
turned to pure tradition, and general consent, and found 
that the former repudiates, and the latter does not ex- 
clusively sustain, immersion. Immersion, then, is not 
baptism; for he is an illogical reasoner, who first de- 
clares that immersion is not authorized by Scripture, 
that it does not express the idea which the divine Mind 
intended it to symbolize, and then declares that the form 
is indifferent. If our reasons are sound, our conclusion 
is inevitable; that affusion alone meets the divine pur- 
pose, and fulfills, formally, the divine command. We 
may, indeed, admit that the obedient intention may, 
through the divine condescension, be accepted, so that, 
notwithstanding the formal defect, God may sanction 
it as done, and not to be repeated. But it may be most 
gravely doubted, whether an administrator, who under- 
stands the subject, is justifiable in performing immer- 
sion. If the candidate has a conscience to be indulged, 
the minister has a conscience to be maintained. While, 
however, we thus maintain our own views, we have not, 
we trust, displayed any illiberality toward the main- 
tainers of other views. We have purposely avoided 
every sectarian appellation, for advocates of immersion 
are found, perhaps, in every denomination. May God 
pour upon us the gentle baptisms of his Holy Spirit ! 
Amen. 



God Discernible in the World's Phenomena. 249 



GOD AS DISCERNIBLE IN THE PHENOMENA OF THE 
WORLD.* 

It is a fact worth noticing by our scientific brethren 
that the wide public interest in the proceedings of their 
associations arises not so much from their purely scien- 
tific discussions as from their attempts at performance 
in philosophy or theology. Upon the facts of merely 
physical value, however conducive their development 
may be to human convenience, they could expatiate 
" from July to eternity " without startling the world 
with excitement ; but when some manifesto is issued 
crossing the higher interests of man's nature and des- 
tiny, or the dealings of God with man, or of biblical 
authority, their audience room is crowded, the reporters 
are all on the alert, and the newspapers ring the echoes 
to the four quarters of the civilized earth. It is thus 
that the scientistic haranguer is indebted to the religion 
he attacks for the reckless notoriety he attains. That 
notoriety is a premium upon scientistic (not scientific) 
irreligion. Hence, at almost every meeting some ambi- 
tious performer mounts the scientific pedestal, and as- 
sumes to pronounce with scientific authority on any 
dogma of philosophy, biblicism, or theology he honors 
with his selection. The world is expected to assent, for 
is it not science that speaks ? The latest grandilo- 
quence of this kind is this present address by Professor 
Newcomb. 

Professor Newcomb's grounds are very peremptory 
and very exclusive. They amount to this: The entire 
course of nature is a series of mechanical sequences, from 
which all interference from any outside causation is en- 

* Review of Professor Simon Newcomb on The Course of Nature. 



250 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



tirely excluded. Knowing the premises and the laws of 
the series, " we can predict with unerring certainty what 
the result will be." " If we include the whole of nat- 
ure in our field, no outside facts can come in; and her 
course, therefore, admits of being predicted with entire 
certainty from beginning to end." 

Again, " the mechanical theory of natural operations, 
or, as it is sometimes called, the doctrine of the uniform- 
ity of nature, is generally acquiesced in by the mature 
thought of intelligent Christendom." "It [the school 
of science] tells us that the whole course of nature 
takes place in accordance with certain laws capable of 
expression in mathematical language;" and the pro- 
fessor proceeds to deny any interference whatever with 
the invariable sequences under those laws. This he 
calls, very truly, " the mechanical theory of the course 
of nature." 

Again, u At each moment of time the state of the 
universe is the effect of the state which immediately 
preceded it, and is the cause of the one which imme- 
diately follows." 

The special point here, let it be specially noted, is not 
so much what he includes as what he excludes. These 
mechanical sequences are universal and eternal, and no 
special interposition from without ever has, or ever will, 
interrupt or vary them. He admits that back of the 
great machine there may have been a primordial cause 
of the whole ; and at that back there is a belt where 
theism may come in. God can be admitted at the back 
door. But God must stay back. After the machine 
has started he must hands off. So that the professor 
is no atheist. And yet Darwinism, as he assures us, 
does affirm that the eye, and, of course, every thing else, 
comes into existence without any design ; and when 
Darwinism is proved it will destroy all admission of in- 



God Discernible in the World's Phenomena. 251 



tentionality in " the course of nature." And he assures 
us that if the maintenance of unintended obedience to 
law, obedience excluding all "scrutable" design, pur- 
pose, or object, be atheism, then science is rapidly tend- 
ing to atheism. So that the professor, and all science 
with him, vibrates on the brink of atheism. For, what- 
ever he may please to call it, all theology will pro- 
nounce the denial of intentionality to be blank atheism. 
A God without design is a dead-head, and no God 
at all. 

Now, we admit "the theory of the mechanical course 
of nature" positively, but we do not admit the exclu- 
sion, negatively, of all interposition with that course 
from an external personality. The professor tells us 
that he has carefully studied several volumes of emi- 
nent theologians to ascertain, but has never been able 
to ascertain, whether they believed in said mechan- 
ical course of nature or not. Assuredly, after the* 
failure of several standard volumes to satisfy the pro- 
fessor, it would be immodest for us to imagine that 
we can satisfy him ; but we trust we can satisfy our 
readers not only as to ichat we believe, but as to the 
firmness of the ground on which our belief is founded. 

We say, then, that when he affirms the intrinsic in- 
variability of the course of nature, he is right. But 
when he affirms that no personal will, whether divine, 
or angelic, or diabolic, or human, or animal, has ever in- 
terfered with the course of nature under her laws, he 
commits a stupendous mistake. If a ball be flying in a 
straight line through the air, and a deft player hits it a 
rap and deflects its career to a slant, he has changed, not 
a law of nature, but the course of nature's sequences 
under her laws. He has effected a result which all nat- 
ure's mechanical powers could not have accomplished. 
So intrinsically immutable do we hold those laws to be 



252 



Essays,, Reviews, and Discourses. 



that we believe that from eternity to eternity the course 
of nature could not have undergone such change with- 
out the introduction of a force from without. If a 
higher being, a holy Gabriel, or a bad Samuel, did the 
same thing as our ball-player, it would be called a mir- 
acle — a miracle not from any difference in the nature of 
the event, but in the rank of the agent. If the profess- 
or extends his hand and rescues a drowning fly, he has 
interfered with nature's course just as much as Jesus 
did when he rescued the sinking Peter. To the fly, 
both are alike miracles. 

This view discards the old theological definition 
which says that " a miracle is a suspension of the laws 
of nature." It was, we believe, the eminent metaphy- 
sician, Dr. Thomas Brown, who first suggested that a 
miracle is simply the interposition of a new antecedent 
into the train of nature's sequences, thereby not sus- 
pending the law, but varying the consequents under the 
law. Dr. Mansell then made clear that this variation 
is called a miracle only when and because the interposed 
antecedent is furnished by a superhuman being. But 
the course of nature may be as truly deflected by an 
animalcule as by an archangel. And truly this brings 
into view a stupendous amount of deflection of "the 
mechanical course of nature." George P. Marsh has 
written a book showing the vast effects which human 
beings have produced on the surface of the earth. What 
an infinite number of the interposed variations of the 
interiorly invariable ! And then think of the immeas- 
urable amount of deflections achieved by the total 
amount of animal movements since the azoic period ! It 
is, too, a most sublime thought that will is thus the sole, 
the great, antithesis to nature. And it is a most sublime 
contradiction, too, of the professor's doctrine that there 
is no deflection of nature's course from without, and 



God Discernible in the World's Phenomena. 258 

that the universe of the present moment is the exact 
physical sequence of that of the previous moment. 

As science, then, is limited to the affirmation of sim- 
ply an intrinsic invariability of physical sequences, so 
the question whether a deflection from an extrinsic 
source does occur is not a scientific, but a historical 
question. Napoleon's career was a perpetual deflection 
of nature's physical invariability; but we know that 
fact, not from science, but history. And so whether 
Jesus performed a train of supernatural interpositions 
is a question of history. The decision depends upon 
historical testimony, in which history may be aided by 
scientific criticism, but still makes her own decision. 
When it is denied that such facts have occurred, the 
denier is without the bounds of science, and is affecting 
to decide a historical question, where historians are as 
authoritative as himself. We affirm, on the authority 
of history, that nature's courses are perpetually de- 
flected by human and animal will. And just as firmly 
we affirm,* on the same authority, that nature's courses 
are deflected by superhuman will. It is a question 
which we do not propound to science. 

Who doubts the uniformity of nature's laws ? Cer- 
tainly not the theologian; for the theologian's very no- 
tion of a miracle, as an extraordinary event, presupposes 
the ordinary as its necessary antithesis. If all were 
miracle there would be no miracle ; just as when the 
whole page is printed in italics all italic emphasis is 
lost. If the theologian's eternal, omnipotent, and only 
wise God is a reality, there must be a divine plan, and, 
as he is eternal, an eternal plan. The laws of nature 
must be his permanent volitions, and his eternity re- 
quires their permanence. This is old-fashioned theol- 
ogy, and we smile at the self-complacent lectures of the 
scientists aiming to impress us with this trite but divine 



254 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



old truth of the permanence of God's laws upon nature, 
and the uniformity of nature's obedience to those laws. 
Theology taught those truths before science was born. 
Even the miracle that crosses the orbit of the physical 
law is the acting of a higher law, the law of eternal 
reason in the divine mind, which moves with a larger 
orbit of uniformity all its own. So that the very mira- 
cle is fulfillment of law. Our phenomenal changes are 
based in the divine immutability. And to finite beings 
the uniformity of these laws is the ground of all calcu- 
lation, and logic, and rational intelligence. Without 
this uniformity of nature's course man could never cal- 
culate, reason, or form a plan of conduct. These laws 
are the divine epistle from God to us. They are the me- 
diators between the infinite mind and the finite mind ; 
rendering an intelligent world possible. But the ex- 
treme physical lawolatry that would imprison God in his 
own laws, or that would abolish God and let laws at- 
tempt to operate without their divine Main-spring, or 
that would make the divine Mechanist incompetent to 
intersect the course of the machine with the orbit of a 
higher nature, is not only ignoble, but contradictory to 
highest reason. 

But we are told that, so far as science is concerned, 
" final causes have, one by one, disappeared from every 
thicket that has been thoroughly explored." We be- 
lieve the statement to be manifoldly untrue. Taking 
final causes within the course of nature as proofs of 
God, we believe the common-sense of mankind affirms, 
with Horace Bushnell, " That all things around us are 
mind-molded is as certain as that there are things at 
all." The man who says the eye is not made to see 
with, is on a par with the antigeologist who says that 
the fossil remains of animals are mere spontaneous 
sports of nature, which never had life. You cannot re- 



God Discernible in the World's Phenomena. 255 

fute him. If he has not the mental spring to grasp the 
plain truth, there is no help for it. If the ear, in pri- 
mordial correlation with the tongue and vocal organs, 
in primordial anticipation of articulate speech impreg- 
nate with thought, and thence in view of human soci- 
ety, advancement, and history, is not a thicket where 
final cause still displays itself, then the fossil mammoth 
is only one of old earth's nightmare dreams hardened 
into stone. 

And there is, too, many a special "thicket," even 
within nature's courses, from which we suspect that, by 
dictate of universal common-sense, God has not been 
expelled by science. Is not the molding of every hu- 
man face performed by an immediate intelligent power, 
so that it possesses the expression of a true humanity, 
and yet the special expression of individuality? Can 
science, Darwinian or not, explain how this specialty in 
universality is attained by any blind, natural, definite, 
molding power? Can science tell us how a tree, a ma- 
ple, for instance, can, apart from all intelligence, so 
shape its form, and put forth its branches, leaves, and 
fruit, as to remain in species a maple, and yet stay un- 
like any other one maple ? Or in psychology, can any one 
show that a divine Spirit cannot touch the springs of the 
will, shed special clearness upon the intellect, kindle the 
emotions, or regenerate the soul ? Or in physiology, 
can science affirm that an immediate intelligent power 
does not shape the human form, measure out its sym- 
metries, and pour into its organism at will the strength 
of a powerful manhood ? We have read a great many 
pages of Spencer, Tyndall, and Haeckel about " hered- 
ity," and the analogy of crystallization and corn kernel 
to the human body, and the laws of similarity and varia- 
tion in animal descent ; and we are entirely sure that 
you have but to fix these reasoners down to specific 



256 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



points, and you will find that ultimate specializations 
can be explained only upon an underlying intellective, 
intentional basis. There is not only a " thicket," but a 
broad plain, an immense cosmos, from which the Al- 
mighty declines to be expelled. Yet here the scientific 
professor, mounted on his infallible tripod, puts on, per- 
haps, a tone of modesty, and replies, " But science 
knows no such underlying intelligence." We reply, If 
science is competent to know that force exists because 
she sees motion, why can she not see that intelligence 
exists when she sees the apparency of intelligently 
directed motion, that is, motion directed to clear, intel- 
ligential results ? We apprehend this unknowing is the 
fault, not of science, but of the scientist. And our re- 
spected professor may be well assured that the public 
mind will not be controlled by tripods, but will look for 
itself at facts and principles, and for itself will judge 
both science and scientists. These professional annun- 
ciators, under atheistical predispositions for the purpose 
of a sensation, will have their day, and also their reac- 
tion, and in the light of that reaction God will hold his 
undisturbed throne upon the mind of man. 

Per! laps the pages of science herself present, also, 
some special thickets from which God has not been ex- 
pelled. Campbell, in his reply to Hume on miracles, 
adduced the necessity of man's creation as an undeni- 
able proof of miracle. In varied form his argument 
still remains. For, as deeply as excavating geology 
has found man, she has found him a complete man. 
Geologically he springs into sudden existence, a full- 
grown humanity. And, by the geologic record, race 
after race of lower beings, and of plants, starts up with 
an epochal instantaneousness. How does science know 
that there was no God in all these sudden unheralded 
inaugurations ? Has " final cause disappeared " from 



God Discernible in the World's Phenomena. 257 

this " thicket ? " Again, there was an azoic period, sub- 
sequent to which life commenced. Whence, then, was 
life ? Here is still a much " explored " but uncleared 
"thicket." In his earlier day, Darwin thought that 
originally God may have breathed life into a few pri- 
mordial particles — a miracle! Has he furnished any 
better solution since ? 

We may now adduce some " thickets " of a non-scien- 
titic but historical character from which it is not easy 
to expel a superphysical presence, or to deny an inter- 
ruption in the chain of physical causations. We limit 
ourselves to an instance or two. 

Our first historical " thicket " is the phenomena in the 
Wesley family, of rappings and other manifestations 
from no corporeally human source, for months contin- 
ued. They were examined under all conceivable the- 
ories, by the most skillful investigators, and set all the- 
ories at defiance which did not admit their superphysical 
character. The invisible agents of those phenomena 
acted with intelligent reference to the treatment they 
received. They had a palpable influence in producing 
that supernaturalism in the character of John Wesley 
by which he becnme the apostle of the eighteenth cent- 
ury. They are unquestioned historical facts, facts irrec- 
oncilable with the theory of " the mechanical course of 
nature," as excluding all supernatural interference. 
There are, therefore, intelligent beings, invisible to 
man, who do, probably under certain permitting 
conditions to us unknown, interpose in mundane 
affairs. 

Swedenborg was one night in Gottingen, sitting in a 
social company. Suddenly he arose, went out of the 
door, and, after a while, returning, announced to the com- 
pany that a great fire was raging in Stockholm, Sweden, 
describing with particularity its extent. Three days aft- 
17 



258 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



erward the news arrived, confirming in every respect 
the statement of Swedenborg. The relator of this nar- 
rative is the philosopher, Kant, who declared that there 
is no doubt of its truth. ISTo science can either annihi- 
late that fact or explain it on any theory of an uninter- 
ruptible course of lower physical nature. 

Our third " thicket " may seem of more doubtful char- 
acter, and we adduce it only to suggest a solemn pause 
to skepticism. It is the historical fact of the awful thun- 
ders from heaven that saluted the declaration of the 
papal responsibility by the Vatican Council. It is thus 
related by the correspondent of the New York Tribune. 
He is describing the scene in St. Peter's of the final vote 
on the infallibility question : " The names of the Fathers 
were called over, and Placet after Placet (vote after 
vote) succeeded ad nauseam. But what a storm burst 
over the church at this moment ! The lightning flashed 
and the thunder pealed as we have not heard it this sea- 
son before. Every Placet seemed to bo announced by 
a flash, and terminated by a clap of thunder. Through 
the cupolas the lightning entered, licking, as it were, 
the very columns of the Baldachino over the tomb of 
St. Peter, and lighting up large spaces on the pavement. 
Sure, God was there— hut whether approving or disap- 
proving what was going on, no mortal can yet say. 
Enough that it was a remarkable coincidence, and so it 
struck the minds of all who were present. And thus the 
roll was called for one hour and a half, with this solemn 
accompaniment, and then the result of the voting was 
taken to the pope. The moment had arrived when he 
was to declare himself invested with the attributes of 
God — nay, a God upon earth. Looking from a distance 
into the hall, which was obscured by the tempest, noth- 
ing was visible but the golden miter of the pope, and so 
thick was the darkness that a servitor was compelled 



God Discernible in the World's Phenomena. 259 



to bring a lighted candle and hold it by his side to 
enable him to read the decree by which he deified 
himself." 

The next day after this blasphemous performance, 
Louis Napoleon, as son of the Church, commenced war 
in behalf of the infallible supremacy, against Protestant 
Germany, and in less than three months took place the 
battle of Sedan, the prostration of France, the entrance 
of King Victor Emmanuel into Rome, and the downfall 
of the papal secular kingdom, which had stood ever since 
the days of Charlemagne. Such a combination of events 
may make the skeptic pause and wonder whether the 
divine purpose may not, after all, be sometimes " scru- 
table." Such a view infringes no principle of science. 
It questions not the intrinsic immutability of nat- 
ure's laws. It forgets not that thunder is electricity, 
and that rain is condensed vapor. Not the less may 
the thunder be God's voice to man, and the pouring 
storm, and the black darkness, the tokens of his wrath. 
God can use them all for the crisis, and all nature's 
course be otherwise left unmarred, just as the air cleft 
by the arrow instantly closes its wound and retains 
no scar. We submit that special Providence is no 
contradiction to the intrinsic uniformity of nature's 
laws. 

We have given but a few such facts, and yet we 
can give abundance of them, of such a nature as to 
defy all adverse criticism. Not only in the books, 
but in our daily newspapers of the highest respect- 
ability, facts showing super- mundane interference in 
mundane sequences, are narrated with perfect explic- 
itness by the most intelligent witnesses, published 
at the time and place with the broadest notoriety, 
uncontradicted by any party, and unexplained by 
any scientific professor. When we are told that sci- 



260 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



ence "cannot know" these facts, we reply, that Science 
can be as obstinate an ignoramus as she pleases; but she 
cannot expect that all history and the common sense of 
mankind will be ignoramus in her company. 



REVIEW OF HAECKEL' S ATHEISM.* 

Atheism plus Darwinism equal brutalism; the beast- 
liest philosophy that ever nightmared the human soul. 
We have never, indeed, said that Darwinism was nec- 
essarily Atheism, as Spencerism is; we have even en- 
deavored to show that the Darwinian need not reject 
Moses. But Professor Haeckel, taking the nebular 
theory for his cosmogony, though he admits that he 
cannot account for the commencement of rotary motion 
required in the nebular theory, and Darwinism for his 
biology, educes all existence from the primitive essence 
of unconscious matter, and thus brings out Atheism of the 
most pronounced kind. To the primary dualism of God 
and nature, mind and matter, he opposes the "Monism" 
of essential matter alone ; and he writes this eloquent, 
frank, and learned book to demonstrate that this one 
primitive is alone needed for the entire problem of the 
universe. The rule of a just, benevolent intelligence, or 
of any intelligence at all, over the world, immortality, 
free-will, responsibility, essential soul, are all rejected 
as the infantile conceptions of the world's non-age. 
By necessary laws primitive matter has developed into 
a great synthesis of things rising into a tall pyramid, 
of which, by conditions favorable to him, man, the ex- 
ape, is the apex. 

To Haeckel's solution through Darwinism of the 

* A "Review of The History of Creation. By Ernst Haeckel, Pro- 
fessor in the University of Jena. 



Review of Haeckel's Atheism. 261 



problem of nature we decline to concede the very first 
starting-point. Two things he assumes as his great 
premises, namely : " Heredity, by which like begets 
like; and adaptation, by which exact likeness is varied 
to the demands of surrounding conditions. Heredity 
preserves the uniformity and permanence of species so 
far as they exist, and adaptation secures their unlimited 
variation in time and space; so that, given but a single 
animal organism to start with, all the ranks of living 
nature can be accounted for. Now to an Atheist or Mo- 
nistic denier of antecedent overruling mind, no conces- 
sion can be made of heredity to adaptation. Both are 
intellective terms, terms that implicitly affirm material 
substances, overruled by anterior and superior mind. 

Were the universe a vast mass of orderless chaos, an 
indiscriminate slag, it would afford no proof of an over- 
ruling mind. We agree with Chalmers, that the proof 
for a God arises not so much from the existence as from 
the " collocations," the orderly arrangements of matter. 
The moment this slag shapes into symmetrical plans — 
plans not consisting of geometrical shapes, but plans 
whose parts correspond on an intellective selective prin- 
ciple — we have phenomena that presupposes selective 
mind and will. And this distinction between the geo- 
metrical and the selective is here very important. Mat- 
ter might be supposed by its own necessities to tumble 
unconsciously and undirectedly, like crystals, into geo- 
metrical form, though we do not concede that crystals 
do so. But an organism like a human body, with parts 
combined upon a plan to execute obvious purposes and 
ends, can be only mind-shaped. The correspondent 
parts are not necessarily resultant, but are selected and 
located on an alternative and volitional principle. This 
presupposition of intellective plan increases when there 
is added a subserviency of plan to utilitarian results; 



262 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



further increases with the increased amount of plans, 
complexities, and utilitarian results; and inimitably in- 
creases when an immense system is contemplated, over 
which any great all-pervading purpose is seen as grasp- 
ing into subordination to itself an infinite number of 
subordinate purposes. Now heredity implies a symmet- 
rical contingently-shaped organism produced regularly 
by a preceding similar organism, and such organisms 
are mind-molded objects. If we judge things, as we 
must, by their properties, this organism presents three 
phases : first, a substance which by its properties appears 
to be materialistic ; second, a correspondence of parts, 
or a selective plan, which is volitional; and, third, a 
subordination of the materialistic to the intellectively 
volitional, by which it is constructed and overruled. 
An Atheist has no right, therefore, to assume heredity 
as a premise to account for any results whatever. He 
has no right to any such intellective volitional terms as 
plan, organism, type, laws, and such like, for these are 
all intellective and volitional terms, implying that mat- 
ter is preceded, shaped, and overruled by mind. 

The doctrine of an evolution of created things in 
gradual historic series, unified as one great whole, has 
always been maintained since thought has begun to con- 
template the subject. The Bible contains an outline of 
an evolution. Pope's Essay on Man contains a com- 
plete system of mundane evolution. John Wesley was 
an evolutionist. The problem of human and brute im- 
mortality Wesley solved by conceding immortality to 
brutes. " Wesley," says Dr. Stevens, " believed that 
there was a regular gradation of creation from the ani- 
malcule to the archangel; 'an opinion.' says Southey, 
' confirmed by science as far as our physiological knowl- 
edge extends.' He also thought it probable that each 
class in the series advances, and will forever advance, 



Review of Haeckel's Atheism. 



263 



men taking the rank of angels, and brutes the rank of 
men, and eternal progress and felicity be thus the lot of 
all saved beings." — History of Methodism, vol. ii, p. 422. 
Here is an evolution more complete than Darwinism 
presents; including apparent Darwinism itself in the 
words we italicize. Theistic Darwinism is apparently 
not very anti-Wesleyan. But generally the evolutionism 
of past times embraces all life in a great unit, produced 
by successive creations in accordance with a law sub- 
jective to the divine mind, objective in the created unit. 

Professor HaeckeFs work is not only a " history," it 
is a romance, an epic. His mastery of the science ena- 
bles him to collect and group an immense number of 
facts in form favorable to his theory. And so con- 
vinced is he of the inductively certain truth of the the- 
ory as a whole, that he skillfully and abundantly fills 
all inconvenient blanks with hypothetical facts, facts 
made to order. That is, his view of the whole system 
is so clear that he can tell you with fair probability 
what the missing facts are. The omitted link is con- 
clusively indicated by the very nature of the hiatus. 
He believes that man is not so properly descended from 
monkeys as from an earlier uenetic point, from which 
the monkey branch and man branch diverge. He indi- 
cates the very geographical spot where man began to 
emerge from brute. It is now submerged by sea, lying 
beneath the waters between the promontory of India 
and the shores of Africa. This is the scientific Para- 
dise. And he gives us a splendid map on which are 
traced the lines of humanizing descent, starting from 
the primitive point and diverging over all the conti- 
nents and islands of the earth. His whole work flows 
forth in a strain of rich and variegated eloquence. The 
translation is a model of lucidity. 

Haeckel spreads out in description and picture the 



264 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



wonderful fact in embryology, that the human foetus in 
the womb passes successively through the forms of fish, 
reptile, and quadruped before fully forming into the 
final man. We have every one of us in our unborn 
state gone through these metamorphoses. And this, 
with all Darwinists, he claims as proof that the human 
race is generatively descended and derived through 
these successive gradational races. It certainly is a 
wonderful parallelism. But it seems to be only illus- 
tration; it is no proof. There is no logical or causative 
relation discernible between the two lines of succession. 
The embryo, in its successive transformation, is an im- 
age or picture of the evolutional transformation through 
which the external animal world passes. One shows no 
causation of the other, and the embryonic series only 
illustrates the fact that there is an order of creation. 
But be it specially here noted, it does not illustrate a 
generative order. The succeeding stage of the foetus is 
not born of the preceding stage. It fails, therefore, in 
the very vital point of illustrating the generative descent 
of later animal species from earlier. The embryonic 
stages are produced simply by changes of the relative 
positions of the molecules, but these changes do not em- 
brace the process of sexual concurrence, parturition, and 
birth. If I take a mass of putty and manipulate it 
through exactly the same changes of form, I have pre- 
cisely imaged the embryonic image of external evolu- 
tionary animal developments, and the successive stages 
are most surely not genetically connected. The succes- 
sive changes of shape, that is, the successive changes of 
molecular position, are produced by the interposition of 
the formative forces proceeding from the hands. The 
process is an admirable image of and comment on the 
Mosaic text of the creative order of succession. It illus- 
trates the divine fact that man is a microcosm, a minia- 



Review of Haeckel's Atheism. 265 



ture of the macrocosm, summing up all his created 
predecessors in himself, and rising in himself above 
them all. If there had been so many successive births 
in the womb of successive foetuses, it would have been 
an illustration of Darwinism. But being only a formal 
succession, so far as it is proof it establishes a forma- 
tive, but not generative, succession. 

But whatever the external form of a human foetus, it 
never was at any stage a real fish, or tortoise, or dog. 
From the first seminal element to the birth it was a man 
and nothing else. That is, there resided in the human 
seminal essence at the first the formative power, superior 
to and overmastering all its forms, which did not reside 
in that of the lower animals, and which was human first 
and last, and sure to produce a man. Professor Haeckel 
can snuffle at that immaterial superior formative power 
as much as he pleases; true reason recognizes its exist- 
ence as a supreme fact, for which his philosophy does 
not account. 

But the theory of a mind-formed, mind-ruled world 
is stigmatized by Haeckel as anthropomorphism. This 
is a popular taunt with thinkers of his class. Spencer, 
with a clumsy jest which proves that sarcasm is not one 
of the gifts of his most serious nature, calls it "the car- 
penter theory of creation." And Tyndall objects to 
Clerk-Maxwell's cal ing matter a "manufactured arti- 
cle," as derogatory to the Infinite. It is a curious con- 
science that shows such sensitiveness to a supposed in- 
sult to a supposedly non-existent entity ! It is a still 
more curious notion of dignity that rejects the cmthro- 
pomorphic, and substitutes therefor a mechanomorphic 
theory, as if unintelligent mechanism were more digni- 
fied than intellective man. It increases the dignity im- 
mensely, forsooth, to strike from a creative or formative 
agency the attribute of intelligence and reduce it to 



266 Essays, Reviews, and Discoukses. 



idiocy ! If ours is an anthromorphic, theirs is a moro- 
morphic, a fool-formed theory. If instead of in effect 
calling God here a " carpenter " we substitute architect, 
a term essentially identical, yet incidentally more es- 
thetically dignified, Spencer's sarcasm loses all its point; 
for both poetry and oratory have ever delighted to call 
God the " architect of creation." And why should a 
genius so radical and essentially democratic as Spencer's 
appeal to the low conventional contempt of " a carpen- 
ter," as if there was not something truly divine in the 
humblest act of mind shaping matter to intelligential 
form and benevolent use? How infinitely superior to 
this unseemly snobbishness is that most divine concep- 
tion of our Christian religion which narrates that the 
Son of God was putatively a " carpenter's son " and 
himself a "carpenter!" What a flash of unexpected 
grandeur does that fact let down upon our most humble 
lowliness, revealing to our view the sublime truth that 
man, in the legitimate use of his noble faculties, is, in 
spite of homely conventionalities, both in nature and act 
the image of God ! God is anthromorphic because man, 
as productive mind, is theomorphic. But it is false that 
our theory is anthropomorphic any more than theirs. 
For if an intelligential origin is anthropomorphic because 
man possesses the attribute of iiitelligence, it follows that 
their own mechanical or force origin is anthropomorphic, 
for surely man possesses the attribute of force. Newton, 
it is said, no matter whether truly or not, constructed 
his theory of universal gravitation from seeing the fall 
of an apple ; and so gravitation is appleomorphism ! 
His problem was to account for the motions of the as- 
tronomic system, and of all the systems of the universe; 
and he found the solution in the apple moving to the 
earth. That appleomorphic solution he extended to 
immensity. With us the problem is to account for the 



Review of Haeckel's Atheism. 267 



apparently intelligential forms and combinations that 
make up the universal system. We find it in nous, in- 
tellect / that intellect revealed to us most clearly in our 
own finite mind; just as Newton found attraction in the 
moving apple. And just as Newton extended his ap- 
pleomorphism into explaining the gravitation ruling all 
existing things throughout immensity, just so we as 
legitimately extend our anthromorphism into an expla- 
nation of the intelligent forming and ruling all existing 
things. Most surely if we cannot be allowed to explain 
the infinite by finite instances, all extended reasoning is 
at an end. But what right have these men to maintain 
that there is no intellect but human intellect ? Or, still 
more, what right have they to charge us, who do not 
limit intellect to humanity, with holding an anthropo- 
morphic theory, because we hold the intelligential the- 
ory ? We hold that intelligence, in its own nature, irre~ 
spective of any finite intelligent, solves creation. Ours 
is not specially the anthromorphic, but the intelligenceo- 
morphic theory. We hold, and none can disprove, that 
intelligence belongs to higher natures than man. Intel- 
ligence is in itself not only anthropomorphic, but it may 
be angelomorphic, archangelomorphic, nay, theomor- 
phic. The force philosophers of the present day find 
force exemplified in special finite instances, and they 
generalize it to infinity. The intelligence philosophers 
find intelligence exemplified in given finite instances, 
and they generalize it in the same way into infinity. 
And as the intelligence philosophers recognize this uni- 
versal force presented by their brother philosophers, so 
they also recognize that said force does operate accord- 
ing to intelligential methods, produces intelligential 
shapes and movements, and appears to act under the 
guidance and control of intelligence. They generalize, 
then, most legitimately, that this universal identity of 



268 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



intelligence-ruled force is God. It is God unlimited, so 
far as we know, in power and wisdom; God omnipotent 
and omniscient. And inasmuch as this limitless force of 
our brother philosophers is not prevented by its infinity 
from acting in the most minute quantities, and produc- 
ing the most minute effects, so God omnipotent is under 
no difficulty, and no disqualification, arising from his 
great dignity, in manufacturing an atom, or carpenter- 
ing a world. God omnipotent finds no difficulty in cre- 
ating a hair. All the metaphysics about the impossi- 
bility of the finite being produced or moved or modified 
by the Infinite is infinite humbug. 

As to the moral attributes of God, Haeckel is trench- 
ant and destructive. Life through all its ranks is hate, 
war, and destruction; and all living species can say 
with Job's messengers, " I only am escaped alone to tell 
thee." Over a pessimism like this does there reign, he 
asks, a benevolent God? It is, indeed, terrible; and 
Haeckel deems the negative conclusion self-evident. 
But a few hundred pages further on, near the close of 
his last volume, he relents. Some misgivings seem to 
arise that his theory is too hateful for human accept- 
ance, and he feels it necessary to irradiate it witli a few 
optimistic hues, very relieving to its horrors, and quite 
contradictory to his logic. In this exterminating strug- 
gle for life, he graciously assures us, lies the assurance 
of human progress. Ever and ever it is the fittest who 
survive ; and therein lies a future of human elevation 
in which, relieved from all fear of God, the race will be 
interminably great and glorious. Happy atheistic mil- 
lennium ! But, alas ! we reply, neither he nor we will 
be there to see. With our ancestral snails, toads, and 
apes, we shall have tumbled into that abyss of nothing- 
ness from which no future recollection will ever recall 
our image, and even the denizens of the millennium 



Review of Haeckel's Atheism. 269 

will be perpetually tumbling in after us. But that op- 
timism is the very argument which, with far more force, 
the theologians use to defend the goodness of God, who 
permits evil, indeed, but only because from the permis- 
sion of evil he can educe a transcendent good; a higher 
good, on the whole, than if the evil were not permitted. 
It is our theology which proclaims not only an advanc- 
ing progress and an earthly millennium, but points to 
glory and eternal life as the crowning evidence of divine 
goodness in the history of the world. For our race, our 
theology argues a vast amount of existing earihly hap- 
piness, for otherwise death would not be terrible. We 
all consent and desire to live because we enjoy; and 
when faith, hope, and love animate us, our hearts exult 
aboundingly in contemplation of that goodness of God 
against which atheism blasphemes. To the atheist the 
world is rightly pessimistic, and God is truly a terrible 
God. What wonder that he who hates God should 
realize that God abhors him ? Pessimism and Atheism 
are twin brothers. 



PRAYER AND SCIENCE.* 

"Jehovah is dead !" was the jubilant exclamation 
of a German agnostic philosopher. "Theology is the 
past tense " is the first sentence of Mr. Wakeman, more 
modest in expression, but synonymous in import and 
equal in its mistake. " Theology is the past tense " we 
cheerfully grant ; a glorious past tense ; and statistical 
science predicts a future tense far more illustrious. The 
Christian Church is growing more rapidly than the 

* A Review of Mr. "Wakeman's Science and Prayer in the North 
American Review. 



270 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



world's population; and our evangelical Christianity is 
growing the most rapidly of all the forms of Christian 
doctrine. And the spread of Christianity has never 
been so rapid as in the last fifty years. These facts 
have been critically and arithmetically demonstrated in 
Dorchester's Problem of Religious Progress, so that 
after all these hostile jubilations, derived from "sci- 
ence," science herself declares that Jehovah still lives, 
and that Christianity will rule in beneficent power long 
after Mr. Wakeman and myself are forgotten. 

Mr. Wakeman maintains the mechanical nature of 
the system of the universe, and the exclusion therefrom 
of any controlling Mind. This mechanical universe he 
holds to be governed by unintelligent laws, without 
any intellective lawgiver. " These laws are : the inde- 
structibility of matter, the correlation and equivalence 
of forces, gravitation, and the law of evolution." 
Brevity, of course, precludes him from being able to 
demonstrate that so adaptive and so planned a system 
excludes the planning mind ; and he, therefore, refers 
us for that demonstration to Herbert Spencer's First 
Principles, chapters iv-ix. The same brevity, as well 
as the absence of any argument presented, precludes 
our answering Mr. Spencer's supposed demonstration. 
We can only, in like manner, refer for its refutation to 
Janet's celebrated work on Fined Causes. 

Next, from this high priori ground of agnosticism, 
Mr. Wakeman comes down to the issue upon the plat- 
form of our theism, and boldly maintains that the attri- 
butes of our God, humanly though we state them, shut 
his ears to prayer. " Theism," he says, " assumes a God 
who is anthropomorphic and yet — ." Pause a moment 
there. We respectfully suggest to Mr. Wakeman 
whether that epithet "anthropomorphic" so popularly 
reiterated by our agnostic philosophers, is not below 



Pea y ek and Science. 



271 



their intellectual level; whether it has not too much of 
an ad captandum quality. Between God and man we 
hold there to be no other resemblance or identity than 
that they are both spirit. It is not likeness of phys- 
ical image, but an analogy of spiritual nature. And 
our Christian theism holds that there, doubtless, are 
grades and ranks of spirit beings, invisible "principali- 
ties and powers," occupying the immense vacuity be- 
tween the infinite God above and finite man below, 
practically infinite in number; so that to say that God 
is anthropomorphic is simply to say that God is at the 
summit of the sublime spiritual column of which man 
is the lowest base. Moreover, there are countless in- 
stances in which the finite thing unquestionably is a 
miniature, and even the reduced identity of an infinite. 
Newton, it is said, conceived the idea of gravitation 
from the fall of an apple, so that Newton conceived the 
astonishing absurdity of supposing that the universe is 
appleomorphic ! Space we suppose our learned friend 
conceives as infinite ; and yet space can be inclosed in 
a quart bottle, and so infinite space is bottleomorphic, 
LaNV we know is proclaimed by these illustrious think- 
ers to be universal, all-pervading, almighty. But law 
does condescend from its infinity to rule the humblest 
ultimate atom of matter ; and so universal, all-pervad- 
ing, almighty law is atotnomorphic* Force, we sup- 
pose, is conceived to be practically infinite and nil-con- 
trolling. But this same force does reside in the living 
human body ; inclosed, as we may say, within the hu- 
man skin ; and so is truly shaped to and incarnated in 
the human form. And so infinite, almighty force is 
anthropomorphic! So Mr. Wakeman himself holds to 
an almighty anthropomorphic but unintelligent ruler of 
the cosmos. If there can be an infinite and a finite 
force, why not an infinite and a finite spirit ? And won- 



272 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



derful it is to conceive how as truly perfect is infinite, 
omnipresent law in the infinitely small as in the infi- 
nitely great. Herschel and Clerk Maxwell affirm that 
the ultimate atom has the character of "a manufact- 
ured article." An English rhymster has illustrated 
the downward travel to infinite littleness in quaint style 
nearly as follows : 

" So naturalists affirm the flea 
Hath lesser fleas on him that prey; 
And these have lesser fleas that bite 'era, 
And so descend ad infinitum." 

And thus the infinite condescends to finite itself to 
the infinitesimal ! Science itself, therefore, demonstrates 
that the infinite can move in the slightest movements, 
can incarnate itself in the minutest objects, and operate 
under guise of most truly finite causes. 

And next, as our thought peers down and down this 
descending line of fleas, not only is each flea mentally 
seen to be perfectly shaped by infinite force, and that 
force to be ruled by infinite law, but that law obeys the 
authority of mind. For, as experience reveals that the 
shaping of matter is ruled by the pressure of force, and 
force is by experience seen to be ruled by law, so it is 
as clear that law is modified and ruled by reason, and 
reason can be conceived as existing in mind alone. 
More literally we might drop law out, and say that 
force itself is ruled by mind, law being nothing more 
than the way in which reason consistently and regu- 
larly controls and directs the course of things. Mind 
we know, by conclusive psychological experience, does 
volitionally compel force to shape matter to its own 
purpose and model ; and Mr. Wakeman can find nothing 
else than mind in the universe that does so compel. 
As there is nothing that solves the operation of matter 



Prayer and Science. 



273 



but force, and nothing solves the control of force but 
law, so nothing solves the imposition and direction of 
law on force but mind. The proof that the solar system 
is ruled by mind is just the same as the proof that my 
fellow-man is ruled by mind. I know, indeed, my own 
individual mind by consciousness ; but I cannot walk 
into my fellow-being's consciousness and know his 
mind, and can only infer the existence of his mind by 
external rational-like effects. There is, therefore, the 
same reason to infer that intelligence rules in that 
mass of matter called nature as there is in that mass 
of matter which I call my fellow-man, namely, the 
intelligential effects seen. The atheist ought to deny 
the existence of any consciousness but his own. If the 
rational effects in human mechanism demonstrate hu- 
man mind, so the rational effects in a superhuman 
mechanism demonstrate superhuman mind. Why do 
we recognize mind in the formation, the adaptation, of 
the parts of a flea? Because every thing is known by 
its properties, and this shows the objective properties 
which experience proves to belong to mind. And then, 
if infinite force is ruled by mind, that mind is also as 
infinite as force. And that unity of infinite force and 
infinite mind we call God. And if being intelligent is 
being anthropomorphic, Mr. Wakeman is welcome to 
the conclusion. 

And this condescension of infinite Perfection to the 
unities — to their imperfections, contingencies, and little- 
nesses — is the very result of its perfection. An infinite 
unable to reach the humblest infinitesimal would fail to 
be an infinite. It is its perfect extension to the minut- 
est particle of existence that constitutes infinity. A 
perfect force impels the minutest atom, a perfect law 
descends to the minutest event, a perfect providence 
takes care of the minutest animalcule. It is not con- 
18 



274 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



fused by infinities of number or immensities of space. 
It takes care of one animalcule with as concentrated an 
omniscience as if that one animalcule were the only 
object in universal space. And this results from the 
very infinitude and perfection of that Providence. In 
the force, the law, or the providence, the omission of 
the care of one infinitesimal would be an absolute im- 
perfection. 

And, what is specially to my purpose, this infinite 
law-ruled force, whether ruled by mind or not, and 
whether anthropomorphic or not, condescends to the 
prayers of the minutest flea. In order to live, the flea 
must have all the parts of his body put together and 
symmetrized ; the apparatus and the material for eat- 
ing and nutriment must be supplied ; the appetites and 
instincts be placed in the organism, prompting and di- 
recting it to perform the self-nourishing process. These 
needs and wants for self-completeness and conservation 
are his unconscious prayers ; and infinite law-ruled force 
adjusts itself to and answers those prayers. Much more 
may it condescend to the prayers of man, w T ho is in the 
very image of God. The expressed prayers of man, 
which are only his vocalized needs, are comprehended 
in the completeness of his being, and, therefore, em- 
braced in that divine condescension. 

One of the noblest sentences, indeed, ever penned by 
human hand was that sentence of Moses, " God created 
man in his own image, in the image of God created he 
him." This says, not so much that God is anthropo- 
morphic, as that man is theomorphic ; not, indeed, so 
much so in his corporeal frame as in his nature and 
spirit. And the author of the Book of Wisdom explains 
this sentence by saying, "God made man for immortal- 
ity." And herein man, unlike the animal races, has an 
eternity done up in his nature, a wonderful parallelism 



Pkayer and Science. 



275 



with God himself. And how has that divine sentence 
ennobled the thoughts and character of man through 
the ages of Christendom! And hence, too, the pro- 
found consistency of our Christian theism in believing 
that God condescends to man. It is a great a fortiori, 
that if God condescends to the voiceless needs of the 
infinitesimal insect, much more will he condescend to 
the vocal needs of the being created in the image of 
his own eternity. 

After this anthropomorphic banter, Mr. Wakeman's 
first argument against prayer-fulfillment is drawn from 
the divine perfection. " If the laws of nature be but 
the order of continuous manifestations of his power, 
they are invariable because they must be perfect, for 
they are the action of a Perfect Being who omnis- 
ciently knew all things for all time, and had infinite 
power to execute all that he knew or wished. Such a 
being is, therefore, commonly and properly described 
as unchangeable, and " without shadow of turning." 

It does not follow, we reply, that, because a being is 
absolutely perfect, the products of his powder are abso- 
lutely perfect. A created being is inferior to his crea- 
tor, and is, therefore, not absolutely perfect. A created 
universe is not absolutely perfect, for it is inferior to its 
creator. There can, therefore, be no absolutely perfect 
creation. The dependence of a living being is an im- 
perfection. Limitation in the magnitude or amount of 
a being is an imperfection. Hence all finities are but 
relatively perfect. And that is relatively perfect which 
is best adapted to its end or place. And in order to 
the variety of a world, and to deliver it from monotony, 
there need be ranks and grades, and so superiorities and 
inferiorities; the highest superior being inferior to the 
Most High, and so all beneath him and dependent upon 
him ; and, therefore, imperfect, but relatively perfect. 



276 



Essays, Reviews, and Discoukses. 



Yet an infinitely wise being would create a universe, 
however necessarily imperfect, if its existence were bet- 
ter than its non-existence. If the alternative be be- 
tween a defective universe and universal nothing- 
ness, wisdom would probably prefer the former. Wis- 
dom would create the best possible universe. And the 
admission of defects might be necessary to that best 
possible. In this little music-box I have on my table 
there is a polished revolving cylinder, from whose solid 
circumference projects a large number of needles, stand- 
ing in the most lamentable disorder. That disorder is 
plainly seen to be an imperfection. And yet every one 
of these projectives is so positioned as to strike upon its 
proper metallic key in such precisely successive order 
as to produce the most perfect strain of music. That 
is, disorder is a necessary condition to a higher order ; 
imperfection is the condition of perfection. And that 
imperfection is relatively perfect, and that relative per- 
fection is absolutely imperfect. We justify the imper- 
fection by pointing to the high perfection it condition- 
ates, and to the more perfect system that results. 

Nor does Mr. Wakeman rightly claim, that the inva- 
riability of the divine nature, without shadow of turn- 
ing, prohibits an infinite variety of divine actions. The 
basis of all natural laws is the supreme law of reason in 
the divine mind, in accordance with which those laws 
are but the uniform course of divine volitions. Uni- 
formity of law is maintained by the divine will in order 
that finite intelligences may be enabled to know what 
to expect, and to calculate the future and regulate their 
actions; a uniformity without which intelligence would 
be unintelligent. And, of coarse, should a given law 
have finished all the purpose of its existence, and have 
performed its whole mission, then, by the same reason, 
which is the supreme law of laws, would it be changed. 



Prayer and Science. 



277 



This would follow from the very immutability of that 
reason which, in itself, is without the " shadow of turn- 
ing," but which is carrying finite things through an 
infinite variety of turnings and changes. 

But it is a mistake to suppose that a supernatural 
interposition, a prayer-hearing, a miracle, is a change, 
violation, or suspension of law. It is simply a change in 
the particular course of events under the law by the inter- 
position of a new impulse. Thus a ball is flying througli 
the air, whose course by natural law is to gradually 
curve down in a given direction to the earth. But a 
player suddenly interposes a blow by which its course is 
deflected into a new direction. This is not a change of 
law, but a change of result under law. The new sequence 
is produced by the introduction of a new antecedent. 
And whether that new antecedent is a human or divine 
interposition makes no difference as to the invariability 
of the law. Nor is it a change, as Mr. Wakeman as- 
sumes, in the "general order," for it is contemplated by 
reason as within the divine programme. We know no 
law, science knows no law, that incapacitates Omnipo- 
tence from so interposing. The question whether such 
an interposition ever has taken place is not a question 
of science, but of historical fact. And the man who 
knows that no such fact has taken place in the past 
eternity, and none will take place in the future eternity, 
is simply omniscient. As laws are interposed in order 
that finite intelligences might be intelligent, so interpo- 
sitions may most wisely take place to raise finite intelli- 
gences in thought above the finite routine into recogni- 
tion, contemplation, and sympathy with the supreme 
intelligence. Thence are they developed and educated 
into a nobler nature by that Infinite, who, as already 
shown, is infinitely condescending to the finities and 
even to the infinitesimals. 



278 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



The next argument of our learned friend against effi- 
cacy of prayer is from God's foreknowledge. He says: 
" All things must have been fore-ordained by himself, in 
order to be knowable by him. But if he knew and or- 
dained the result he must be morally responsible for it ; 
and if he is also perfect, the result ordained by him 
must be perfect. But it could be perfect in one order 
only ; for there cannot be two perfect orders. There- 
fore the actual order must have been eternally perfect 
and eternally ordained, and the prayer for any change 
must be useless and absurd." Our Calvinistic brethren, 
we reply, might concede that God must fore-ordain in 
order to foreknow, but we are Arminian, and hold no 
such conception. God's foreknowledge is but a phase 
of his omniscience, by which he knows all things, past, 
present, and future, possible or necessary. And as 
fore-ordination is an act, and omniscience is an attri- 
bute, of God's nature, so the act must be subsequent 
and the nature antecedent. That is, God must know 
before he ordains. And even if his fore-ordination and 
his omniscience are both eternal, still, in the order of 
necessary thought, the omniscience must be antecedent 
to the fore-ordination, as an eternal cause is in the order 
of thought and nature antecedent to its eternal effect, 
as the eternal Father is antecedent to the eternal Son. 
And that fore-ordination of a particular finite fact may 
be in its nature conditional upon a foreknown anteced- 
ent event. God may know that an agent can freely, 
unnecessitatedly choose either of several ways. And 
then he may know which one of the several ways which 
the agent is able to choose will be the way he will actu- 
ally choose. God's omniscience no more compels this 
agent's special action than the light of the sun, falling 
upon his body, cramps it to a particular course. The 
foreknowledge adjusts itself to the choice, not the choice 



Prayer and Science. 



279 



to the foreknowledge. And so the most perfect cosmos 
is the cosmos which, having a base fixed in its own ma- 
terial laws and substance, is the stage on which a free 
history is evolved and made by free agents. And the 
most perfect order of God and plan of the historic 
world is that which is finally the grand resultant and 
sum total of free action under divine overrule. And in 
the very perfection of that plan are included such sym- 
pathy between Infinity and the finities, between God 
and man ; and such condescensions and special interpo- 
sitions, and divine interferences and commands, as are 
wonderful; as wonderful as those condescensions we 
have already shown to exist in nature. And "the re- 
sponsibility " for the free alternative choice in favor of 
evil rests, not " upon God," but upon him who, with 
full power for good choice instead, originated from him- 
self the actual evil choice. For man is not a thin<r; far 
less an infinitesimal thing. As a living, intelligent being, 
he is of more importance than the whole material uni- 
verse ; for that universe might just as well be so much 
pure space, so much absolute nothingness, except in so 
far as it contributes to the well-being of a thinking, 
feeling being. It results, therefore, from the perfec- 
tions, and especially the immutability, of God, that al- 
ternativity and change and interposition should be em- 
braced in his system. 

Mr. Wakeman argues, above, that as perfection is 
one, and " there cannot be two perfect orders," so there 
can be but one way possible to God. Absolute perfection 
is, we admit, one, and " cannot be two ; " and is realized 
in God alone. But relative perfection, approximate per- 
fection, is a thing of degrees ; and who can say that 
there may not be several perfects in equal degree? 
But even the oneness of perfection requires not one 
stiff procedure, one iron stereotype ; for variability, pos- 



280 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



sibility of substitution, itself may often be the one best 
and most perfect course of things. 

Mr. Wakeman next raises and answers a theistic 
inquiry : " But it is said, may not God, in some way, 
adjust his fixed laws so as to effect answers to prayer 
much as human beings do, or are supposed to do ? The 
answer is, that scientific laws are invariable, and there- 
fore always unadjustable. They cannot be adjusted by 
either God or man." We ask the proof that he who 
imposed these laws cannot withdraw, modify, or change 
them. A distinguished scientist, Professor Cooke, of 
Harvard, in a noble volume, entitled The Religion of 
Chemistry, has shown with great beauty and force that 
the laws of nature themselves exhibit luminous proofs 
of having been primordiully planned for the construction 
of a cosmos by an all-comprehensive will. Freedom of 
choice is a divine perfection, and so the planning will 
that imposed those laws can suspend or repeal them. 
And both that imposition and that change may, like 
any other divine act, be part of a still more primordial 
plan, and be required by divine perfection. 

Next, Mr. Wakeman considers a theistic case of ad- 
justment. " Let us," says he, " suppose that prayer was 
foreknown and fore-ordained by the Supreme Being as 
a thing to happen as a part of his government by which 
man would procure a benefit that God had fore-ordained 
thereupon to grant. Then the prayer would be useless ; 
for the event would happen as a part of the perfect 
world-order, without prayer, or, if prayer were decreed 
to be inseparably connected with the event, then it 
would be simply a part of it, a superfluous concomitant 
of the event, and useless, since the event would happen 
without it. The maker of the prayer would be only an 
automaton working for nothing." The case, as we un- 
derstand it, is this. A storm, we will suppose, is about 



Prayer axd Science. 



281 



to happen in the natural order of elementary sequence, 
which will suddenly relieve a long and. destructive 
drought. God divinely arranges so that a prayer of 
faith is immediately followed by the bursting of the 
storm. Barely this sequence would not approve itself 
an interposed answer. But if the prayer anticipated a 
variety of peculiar facts and events in the coming of 
the storm, those anticipations might be so special as to 
prove the prayer predictive. The prayer would be 

useless n as to changing the special sequence ; but it 
would be profoundly beneficent as proving the great 
truth we have illustrated, the divine condescension to 
the finite. Such was the prayer of Elijah for the storm 
which God promised to succeed his performance of the 
prayer-gauge with the priests of Baal. It was a predic- 
tive prayer of faith; and the fulfillment proclaimed that 
" Jehovah is" not "dead." And so the deluge of Noah 
may have been a natural event, and yet so concurrent 
with the preceding wickedness of men and the inspired 
anticipations of Noah as to come into the order of the 
supernatural, testifying Jehovah's existence and his 
divine retribution. 

A further argument against prayer-answer is, that to 
affix a special result to a prayer " would be condition- 
ing the order of events and the order of a perfect world 
upon the volition of an imperfect being." Have we not 
shown that imperfection in the world is often the con- 
dition of perfection ? Surely the learned reasoner will 
not maintain that the world and its events are not mod- 
ified by man's volitions, however imperfect. Professor 
G. P. Marsli shows how man's volitions have changed 
the face of the earth. And the reasoning is especially 
malapropos in the case of answered prayer ; since we 
shall soon show reason to believe that such prayer is 
always iuspired and guided by God himself, so that 



282 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



the act of the imperfect being is sure to be, if not per- 
fect, tributary to a perfect result. 

Finally, a prayer- answering God, he declares, is " the 
reverse of worshipful," "'a limited imperfect, quasi 
human agent." Please just reverse that statement. An 
infinite that cannot condescend to a finite, even to an 
infinitesimal, is limited and imperfect. He is not truly 
infinite nor truly perfect. Infinite force can run down 
the infinite line, diminuendo, of fleas. Infinite law con- 
descends to the ultimate particle, and yet, forsooth, the 
power that energizes that law to the ultimate minimum 
cannot condescend to mortal man ! Mr. Wakeman can 
at once see that such a limitation of the reach of law 
would be infinitely absurd. Why not equally absurd 
this limitation of omniscience and omnipotence ? 

But let us, with our learned friend, put the question 
to an experimental test, the "prayer-gauge." Mr. Tyn- 
dall proposed, if we rightly recollect, that there should 
be two wards of a hospital, in one of which all prayer 
should be offered for the patients, and for the other all 
Christians should be prayerless. We will then know 
whether prayer is effective of answer and fulfillment. 
Mr. Wakeman tells us those scientists who proposed such 
contract were " vociferously accused " of " profanity 
and blasphemy," etc. I never heard or read those vo- 
ciferous accusations ; but it seems to me that, if he will 
for a moment contemplate the Christian idea of the 
Divine Being, he would candidly confess that such a 
performance, if not the proposition, would justly seem 
to Christians profoundly irreverent. Mr. Wakeman 
assures us that " no advocate of prayer dares to imitate 
Elijah " in trying such a test. Our friend is mistaken. 
We accept his challenge, and are ready to '•' imitate 
Elijah." But before we do so, we will make three all- 
important discriminations. 



Prayer and Science. 



283 



Prayer directly affecting an external physical thing, 
changing the order of physical events, we will admit to 
be miracle and miraculous interposition. Hut, first, note 
that the direct interposition of the Divine Spirit within 
the human spirit belongs to a different order. We be- 
lieve that the Spirit of God can pervade the spirit of 
man, as the light of the morning sun pervades the 
atmosphere of our earth, And within that sphere 
there is a spiritual order of cause and effect, which, in 
the sense of being regular, is an order of nature. The 
Spirit of God, pervading the spirit of man, produces 
conviction of sin, of which the consequence may be 
repentance, and the fixed sequence of that may be faith, 
and the sequence of that pardon, justification, peace 
with God. happiness, and heaven. This, as a regular 
order, may be called nature, but from its elevation may 
be called supernatural, but scarcely miraculous. And, 
seco id, the divine energy may also at will enter the 
lower regions of our psychological nature, with sequences 
that can be orderly and yet interposed. Xot only the 
spirit, but the intellect, may be pervaded with bright- 
ening or obscuring influences, the emotions may be 
heaved or allayed, the springs of the will may be 
touched. And, third, and lower still, and unequivocally 
miraculous, the physiological regions may be reached, 
the vital forces, the corporeal energies, the vigor of 
courage, the fountains of health, and the issues of life. 
These three mysterious chambers of operations are rub d 
by God himself as "the hidings of his power." Xo scale 
can weigh, no rule can measure, this divine efficiency ; 
no science can bring it into the circle of physical " cor- 
relations." The current of sequences may here be 
reversed at the demand of prayer, and human science 
be none the wiser for it. Thence may go forth the 
most momentous results into the world. Under this 



28-L 



Essays, Reviews, and Disco urses. 



divine agency the individual fortune may be controlled, 
nay, national destinies may be decided, and man never 
know the secret springs of action. The "order of 
nature " may thus take either of a variety of ways, and 
science perceive no loss of invariability. We are now 
prepared for the prayer-gauge. 

As, however, Mr. Wakeman has specified the prece- 
dent of Elijah, as a good jurist he must accept the case 
as it stands on record. And the record is this : Elijah 
was sent expressly by Jehovah to this experiment of 
prayer, undertaken under prophetic impulse, with a 
divine promise that a miraculous rain should, after the 
prayer-test performed, remove the general drought. 
Elijah therefore waited for a special command, a divine 
authority and a prophetic impulse. We shall do the 
same. We "imitate Elijah." And let it be under- 
stood that this is no quibble, for it is easy to show that, 
by the biblical view, it is a universal law that miracle- 
working is a %ap£<7j(m, charisma, a special divine gift. 
And so the miracle-working prayer is itself miracle- 
wrought. Every miracle is thus double, internal and 
external. The example of Elijah in thus depending on 
special inspiration accords with the biblical law of the 
New Testament. Of this special faith Jesus declared 
in the gospels that if a mustard-seed amount were im- 
parted for a given work, though it were moving a mount- 
ain, it could be done. An infinitesimal particle of 
bestowed omnipotence could achieve its mightiest mis- 
sion. In the Acts of the Apostles the power of " heal- 
ing," especially, was a charisma, a gift. And in the 
epistle St. James tells us that the faith that "availeth 
much " is evepy ov[iev7), inwrought, and quotes Elijah as 
a case in point. 

The possession of that charismatic power is either 
conscious or unconscious. When consciously possessed 



Prayer and Science. 



285 



and given as correlative to a certain act, that act is in 
full faith executed. If that act be to engage in a 
" prayer-gauge," then a man or a church may, as Elijah 
did, undertake the mission. Otherwise no man may with- 
out presumption enter into contract for the Almighty 
to perform a certain work. But if, on the other hand, 
the power for miraculous result be not consciously real- 
ized, then the Christian fervently prays for the exter- 
nality with a cheerful " peradventure God may give " 
the boon, and with the underlying reserve "thy will be 
done," the blessed result of which prayer is to retain 
the human spirit in calm, resigned communion with the 
Divine Spirit. And the Church and the New Testa- 
ment are chary of specifying external things in prayer 
to God. No one claims that prayer- nkill can dispense 
with the medical profession, or that prayer-force can 
take the place of steam-force in running rail-cars. The 
most Christian of ancient pagans, Socrates, as Xeno- 
phon tells us, " prayed to the gods to give us good 
things, realizing that the gods best know what things 
are good ; but he thought that those praying for gold 
and silver and power, or any of such things, prayed as 
it were for a game of chance, not knowing how it might 
turnout." When the parent prays for the life of his 
sick child, perhaps that child, if made to live, would be 
the curse of himself, family, and country. When a prayer 
is offered for a national specialty, its fulfillment may in- 
terfere with the divine administration of the affairs of 
nations. The specialty is unbestowed, but the reflex 
moral and spiritual benefit on the supplicator is im- 
measurable. 

As an actual physiological miracle, the restoration to 
health by prayer must have the rarity of miracle, and 
require the most unequivocal proof, especially as a 
means of convincing an unbeliever. The prayer ordi- 



286 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



narily offered, and that should be ordinarily offered, at 
the sick-bed, is modest and submissive. It is ordinarily 
but the earnestly expressed wish of human sympathy, 
reverently addressed to God, graciously by him accepted 
as such, and resulting only in benign influences upon 
the human feelings. Conscious communion in the devout 
heart with God is itself to the feeble a tranquilizing, sus- 
taining, and restorative power. It is a supernaturalism, 
bringing us nearer to him, and shading imperceptibly 
toward miracle. And as there is something intrinsic- 
ally spiritual also in the secret, life-touching, curative 
power of medicine, so there is in a blending of the two, 
the supernatural and the natural. This divine com- 
munion and trust resting down upon the medicine is 
the so-called " blessing on the means ; " and I doubt not 
that the sick and dying believer in Christ is many 
a time, especially in diseases of mental and nervous 
nature, by this double power restored. Such a case is 
a supernaturalism, but not a miracle. The bold claim 
of a positive objective miracle must be sustained by 
unequivocal proof. The deep reality of the disease, 
the instantaneous sequence of the cure, the complete- 
ness and permanence of the restoration, and the trust- 
worthiness of the witnesses, must be perfectly clear. 
Nor are these cases of such frequency or regularity as 
to be calculated upon as to take place in any hospital 
you may select. 

But we are triumphantly told that Garfield's case pre- 
sents "the crucial test," " grander than that of Elijah." 
Not quite. The discussing parties had entered into no 
compact. Mr. Wakeman and his co-thinkers would 
never have accepted Garfield's recovery as any proof 
of the power of prayer, and Christians never admitted 
his dying as any disproof. With both sides, therefore, 
it was no test case. 



Prayer and Science. 



287 



And then, what Mr. Wakeman calls " the prayer of 
fifty millions " never existed. One third of the nation, 
at least, in deferential silence, was quite willing he 
should die. Two thirds of the whole never prayed, 
even in form. A small minority did devoutly pray ; 
but none of that choice few possessed the divine com- 
mission, the prophetic impulse, or the charismatic power 
of Elijah, and none, so far as I know, ever claimed it. 
It was simply the earnest wish of a large body of our 
people, shaped into earnest, uninspired prayer by only 
the devoutest hearts. What is thereby proved ? What 
nobody ever denied, that the united prayer of our 
Christian body is not sure of obtaining an external, 
physical miracle from God. To assert such a surety 
would be to claim Church control over the physical 
forces of events of the world. We would be glad to 
be informed what Protestant authority of our day ever 
uttered such a claim ! But all this touches not the 
spiritual sequences within the spirit of man, on which 
alone Christianity is emphatic. 

Two or three points made supplementary to the 
argument we may, in conclusion, notice. 

To the argument in behalf of a Supernatural drawn 
from ihe universality of the belief in the supernatural, 
Mr. Wakeman answers somewhat contemptuously. He 
parallels such belief, even the belief in God, with the 
belief in " fairies, witches," etc. But what are even 
those superstitions, we ask, but the unenlightened forms 
of the same natural belief of the Supernatural ? When 
men's ideas are local and fragmentary, their supernatu- 
ral s are so. But even then they often monotheistically be- 
lieve in a supreme deity, though they possess not the full 
conception of an Infinite Being. But when expanding 
thought grasps firmly the realities of infinite space and 
limitless power, and sees the astronomic world to be a 



288 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



unit, the idea of an omnipresent, omnipotent Unit over 
the whole bases itself firmly in the human soul. To the 
claim that the Supernatural is a " want " of the soul, he 
first denies that " the general want of a thing proves its 
existence." My answer is, that for every constitu- 
tional primary " want " of the human soul there is the 
constituted supply, whether each individual obtains 
possession of it or not. He next affirms that the " want " 
is produced by the belief, and will die with it. The 
reverse I submit to be the fact. The belief is prompted 
by the instinctive " want," and established by the intu- 
itive reason, and will live as long as the instinct does. 
To the appalling aspect of these his denials of God, 
personality and immortality, he offers the consolation 
of knowing " the truth." Well, the criminal under 
death sentence, waiting for a reprieve, has a satisfac- 
tion in at last knowing the worst of his case ; but that 
relieves not the anguish of knowing that his doom is 
death. Nor, for us, does the fixed certainty of our 
doom diminish our horror of its endless darkness. To 
all that horror these sad denials surrender us. To the 
deep questionings of the soul, " When shall day dawn 
on the night of the tomb," what is the answer? Quoth 
the Raven, " Nevermore ! " 



The Christian Citizen's Political Duties. 289 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN'S POLITICAL DUTIES. 

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT DIFFERENT PLACES DURING THE 
POLITICAL EXCITEMENT OF 1840. 

The exercise of the elective franchise, while it is 
claimed by all as a matter of constitutional right, and 
actively used by many as a means of personal profit, is 
appreciated by few as a matter of dignity, and consci- 
entiously felt by still fewer as a matter of the most 
sacred obligation. On the other hand, it is matter of 
just alarm that politics are, in so large a part of the pub- 
lic mind, enveloped with the most gross and repulsive 
associations. There are gentlemen to whom they are 
so vulgar, sentimentalists to whom they are so coarse, 
and Christians to whom they are so unholy, that it 
seems necessary to their own dignity, refinement, and 
piety, to shun their contact. And streaks of this kind 
of feeling, it is curious to observe, not seldom flash 
across politicians themselves. Natural as is the tend- 
ency in men to bring their conscience down to the level 
of their practice, the moral sense of politicians in their 
reflective moments obliges them to talk of the " low 
intrigues," "the sordid game," "the selfish strifes" of 
their own pursuits. They seem to realize that there are 
others occupying a purer moral atmosphere, whose purity 
of life and sanctity of profession keep them aloof ; and 
who cannot invade their unhallowed precincts with 
untainted garments. Whenever a wanderer from that 
far-off holy ground intrudes upon their premises, he 
is eyed with askance looks, as one who is not only 
compromising his own character, but molesting the set- 
tled domains of equivocal morality. Sanctity visiting 
a horse-race, or chastity walking into a brothel, they 
19 



290 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



think as much in place as conscience dealing in politics, 
or piety treading the election ground. 

The consequence of this tone of feeling is, that whole 
classes of men, in a greater or less degree, seek the 
place of retreat. Some abandon the caucus, convention, 
and committee-room as no place for them ; but retain 
the poor privileges of expressing themselves implicitly 
in defense of the party in which they are embodied, 
and the candidates whom they find imposed upon them 
by the managers to whom they have given the reins. 
Others retreat a little farther ; both abandoning all the 
management to party leaders, and yet, rejecting any 
subserviency or subordination to either side, they retain 
the right to discuss the merits of either, and vote as 
reason may dictate. Others, farther still, shrink from 
the noise and clamor that fill the political atmosphere ; 
but unwilling to lose all their rights, persist in giving a 
silent vote. A last class, possessed of a moral conscious- 
ness more sensitive still, or a spirit of quietism more set- 
tled, find themselves wholly repelled from the ballot- 
box. Galled by the pressure of that law, which de- 
pravity in the ascendant has passed, they are too pious 
for politics; they retire, save on some extraordinary oc- 
casions perhaps, brow-beaten and crest-fallen from the 
contest. As another after another retreats, the law 
becomes more imperative and proscriptive, until the 
boldest turns craven and slinks away disfranchised and 
dumb. Thus subdued and tamed, in due time he be- 
comes so abject as to ratify the rightfulness of that 
very ostracism which pronounces him too good for any 
thing. Reduced to a cipher, he rejoices in his own non- 
entity, and ejaculates upon himself the benediction, 
"Blessed be nothing, for I am reduced to it." He 
learns to say, " Politics are a low and sordid business, 
unfit for a gentleman, a scnolar, a Christian." 



The Christian Citizen's Political Duties. 291 

This melancholy effect reacts to increase the melan- 
choly cause that produces it. Politics affirm that they 
are too bad to be touched, and piety affirms that she is 
too good to touch them. The ground is thus by equal 
consent surrendered ; and the political citadel, at least, 
if not the outworks, is assigned, in fee simple, to the 
intriguer and political gambler. Politics theu become, 
like the Magdalen's hospital, an nsylum for which pros- 
titution is the essential qualification. The poet Dante 
feigns that upon the archway of pandemonium is in- 
scribed, "Leave hope behind ;" so we might fancy that 
over the archway of the political sanctum, is written, 
" Drop conscience at the entrance." 

Politics thus begin to be marked off as a distinct pro- 
fession. Not that most politicians have not some other 
visible means of livelihood, as a break-weight; for so pre- 
carious is the political game, so like fortune's frolics are 
the people's favors, that few dare trust to such unsub- 
stantial humors for substantial bread. Yet so rich are 
the prizes displayed before the aspirant's eye, so proba- 
ble the chances of his period of success, that while a 
few find permanent employment in political engage- 
ments, with others it forms much the larger, though 
not the entire purpose of life ; while with others still, 
it is a mere episode in their history. A class of men, at 
any rate, there is, that graciously take the business of 
the people at large into their own possession; and while 
to the uninitiated their motto is, Hands off, they con- 
descend to make the management of the nation, and the 
pocketing of salaries, their own profession. They are 
versed in all the profound arts of planning measures 
and managing men ; of creating and destroying at a 
breath (or at least with a few puffs) a political reputa- 
tion. Like the demon in Bunyan, who swore so closely 
in Pilgrim's ear that Pilgrim thought himself the 



292 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



swearer, they manufacture public opinion for us so 
skillfully, th;it we imagine ourselves the original thinker. 
They are masters in the art of compromise and adjust- 
ment, and all those exquisite arrangements by which 
each receives his satisfactory dividend of the common 
stock. And, then, of all the wonders of mechanism in 
our day, amid all the scientific miracles of engineries, 
batteries, and magnetic telegraphs, no prodigy can sur- 
pass the perfection of modern political machinery. 
Talk of Mr. Morse's invention by which events may be 
known a thousand miles as soon as they happen ! Poli- 
ticians know, at any distance, things before they hap- 
pen ! And then talk of panoramas, electrical machines, 
and galvanic batteries ! I know a living panorama, as 
large as the nation, along whose wire streams a more 
than electric power, and every man that breathes feels 
its thrilling touch. Let its master manager but touch a 
central spring, and the vibration is felt to the nation's 
remotest verge. In the grand system of party police 
which modern democracy has brought to so high a per- 
fection, no power is so high as not to be brought under 
control, and no object so small as not to be brought 
under its espionage. The quiet, silent individual voter, 
who has taken no pains to look into the mighty autom- 
aton which is handling him for its tool, is likely to be 
surprised at the vigilance with which his movements 
are traced, his omissions and absences from the bal- 
lot-box noted, and the most respectful pains taken to 
secure his vote from being lost. He may have im- 
agined himself free, in all the unwatched indepen- 
dence of nature; but he is taken care of, with the most 
active guardianship, by those who know his value 
as an available article of property in the political mar- 
ket. But if such be the fetters upon the. limbs of 
those who hang most loosely, what must be the chains 



The Christian Citizen's Political Duties. 298 



which bind together the component part of the par- 
tisan body K 

Few laws are more despotic in their application than 
the law of party union. It has its list of heresies and 
crimes ; its codes of prescriptions, rewards, and punish- 
ments. To venture to transgress its prescribed line of 
duty, to decline receiving the complete equipment of 
party principles, like a complete suit of clothes, to allow 
some local question to draw one from his invariable 
vote with his own great presidential party, to prefer an 
opposite candidate from moral considerations, and to 
perpetrate a split ticket — these are iniquities that have 
blasted the honors and emoluments of many a hopeful 
candidate. On the contrary, an implicit faith in the 
infallibility of our political church, whatever side it may 
take of any question however new ; an implicit self- 
surrender and adherence to its compact, amidst all its 
fluctuations of principles and vicissitudes of fortune; a 
staunch readiness to make liberal sacrifices of purse, 
and still more liberal sacrifices of character and 
moral scruples ; and more than all, an adventurous 
firmness, when the party good requires, to brave the 
thunders of the people's voice, and even trample on the 
people's rights, in simple faith that the silly people will 
soon forget to punish, while the sagacious party will 
never forget to reward — these are merits that have 
crowned many an empty head with the proudest official 
laurels, nnd filled still emptier pockets with thousands 
of treasury dollars. By these means party government 
secures the highest state of disci; dine; straggling dis- 
senters are soon embodied into the firm and solid pha- 
lanx ; a spirit of bold venture and daring aggression is 
inspired, and a fierce emulation burns in every heart to 
distinguish one's self by ultraism in party doctrine and 
heroism in party service. The political world is thus 



294 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



divided into two great societies, organized each with 
its own laws and government, both struggling for the 
ascendency, and often prepared to sacrifice the public 
good to party expediency. Offenses against the real 
good of the nation are venial and unnoticed, offenses 
against the majesty of party are unpardonable and 
sealed over to retribution. Between these two great 
armies, encamped upon the national plain, the people 
have the (rather worthless) privilege of making their 
choice ; but woe to the chainless stragglers that vent- 
ure to hover around the army skirts, or the middle 
men that dare to stand within the two ; the former are 
likely to be hung as spies, detecting the villainies of 
either party; while the latter are likely to be shot down 
by the concentrating musketry of both. 

A party interest thus established, distinctly from the 
public interest, sustained by means in which a large 
body of the quiet and conscientious community, as they 
look on, can take no approving share, it becomes a com- 
mon object with both parties, to put such uncomforta- 
ble spectators at the greatest possible distance. And 
such a distance, they are themselves too much inclined 
to assume. If either party, indeed, could embody them 
soundly into its ranks, it would rejoice in its increase of 
numbers. But they make bad party soldiers. They 
presume to think for themselves whether the com- 
mander's orders are jusl, and the cause he fights for 
righteous. They most absurdly expect politicians to 
be saints; they are ever proposing measures of puri- 
tanical reform ; they are not fond of the noise and 
profligacy of the camp ; and, on the whole, it is far 
preferable to drive them to an indefinite distance, than 
to be embarrassed in the freedom of tactical move- 
ments by the presence of such criticising and impracti- 
cable adherents. 



The Christian Citizen's Political Duties. 295 



Of the various modes by which the more reflective 
part of the community are induced to withdraw from 
the contest, I shall mention but two, namely, the pre- 
tended danger of a union of Church and State; and the 
established maxim that immorality of personal conduct is 
no objection against a political character. 

A few years since the political welkin resounded with 
the hue and cry that our liberties were in danger from 
a national union of Church and State. This pitiful fiction, 
never sincerely believed by those whose lungs most 
loudly re-echoed and, least of all, by those who fabri- 
cated it, served, indeed, as a tocsin to rally the foes and 
scatter the friends of a purer tone of public sentiment. 
Never was a clamor more empty of decent common 
sense ; yet never was falsity more effective. It dis- 
heartened the efforts of the good ; it paralyzed the 
moral energy of the nation ; it silenced the voice of 
moral rebuke ; it depraved the tone of public senti- 
ment; it gave a sure and complete ascendency to bois- 
terous clamor and reckless profligacy. 

So little respect, and so little fear have I, as an indi- 
vidual, for this demagogue cant, that I am greatly pre- 
disposed to believe any thing it denies, and to suspect 
any tiling it favors. Could I find just reasons for 
approving a union of Church and State, no regard for 
such clamor would silence my utterance. And thus 
much I find historically certain, that the time has been 
in the world's history, when the union of Church and 
State was a blessing to the world ; and where evil 
has been produced, the Church has been the first and 
greatest sufferer. When Constantine introduced the 
Church into power, he brought a conservative principle 
into the structure of the empire. That conservative 
principle could not, indeed, arrest the downfall of the 
empire, nor prevent its crush into a thousand frag- 



296 Essays, Reviews, and Discoueses. 



ments ; but, like an angel of rescue, from the very ele- 
ments of ruin, the Church proceeded to remodel a fair 
and goodly creation. The Church, swaying a mighty 
temporal influence, tamed the rude horde of barbarian 
invaders ; developed the different states of the continent 
from their chaotic elements ; inspired them with all of 
holy and spiritual sentiments they were capable of receiv- 
ing ; organized Europe into a great sacred republic, and 
laid the broad and deep foundations of modern civiliza- 
tion. But where the carcass is, thither will the eagles 
gather — where power exists, thither will politicians run. 
They found, in the Middle Ages, that the true place of 
power was in a churchman's gown or beneath a cardi- 
nal's hat, and soon assuming and masquerading in these 
habiliments, they " played such fantastic tricks before 
high heaven as make even angels weep." And when de- 
liverance came from the oppressive dynasty of these poli- 
ticians of the cowl and the tiara, the apostle of spiritual 
emancipation was neither a statesman nor a layman — 
but a Christian preacher. " Modern liberty," says Mack- 
intosh, "took its rise in a discussion about justification 
by faith " — and its champion, we may add, was Martin 
Luther. When, in the feuds of diplomatists and war- 
riors, the doctrine of toleration was subsequently lost, 
its revivers and first propagators, if I mistake not, will 
be found in the United States of Holland, and among 
the followers of that accomplished scholar, profound 
divine, and holy man, James Arminius. And when in 
that most Protestant part of the British isles, Scotland, 
the spirit of both civil and religious liberty rose in op- 
position to ancient oppression, who was the living imper- 
sonation of that spirit ? In honor of that illustrious 
man — without any sanction of the peculiar dogmas of 
his creed — we aaay answer, John Knox. And we re- 
joice to say, that, after years of slumber, the inheritors 



The Christian Citizen's Political Duties. 297 



of his creed have awaked to the possession of his spirit. 
The sublime movement of the Free Church of Scotland 
shows that when the pure spirit of religion lives or 
revives in a Church, she repels the foul embrace of State 
policy, and goes forth, glorious in her humility, mighty 
in her weakness, the very emblem at once of faith and 
freedom. 

A large part of the community thus distanced or si- 
lenced by the Church-and-State outcry, it is a very easy 
matter for the authors of that panic to establish the 
second maxim, that in the nomination and selection of a 
political candidate, moral character is no legitimate sub- 
ject of consideration. Vices are no preventive to the 
nomination, or to the availability of a candidate, just 
because the caucus managers know that the puritans 
and quietists, at least a great share of them, will not 
vote ; that one half of them who do vote, are so far 
partisan that they would not perpetrate the crime of a 
split ticket; and the other half have imbibed the sound 
political doctrine that moral objections have nothing to 
do with politics; and both halves are quite convinced 
that not to support the regular candidate is to throw 
away their vote. 

It may, indeed, be said that private immorality is 
perfectly consistent with public integrity; and that both 
are often combined in the same person. The principle 
of honor in the absence of conscientious- principle, is a 
perfectly ample basis for a firm structure of public vir- 
tues ; and as official functions are a mere agency which 
the incumbent is delegated to perform, his private im- 
morality has nothing to do with his fitness for their 
performance. 

But can we forget that popular suffrage places its 
favorite at the summit of human elevation, and invests 
him with a commanding influence over the tone of pub- 



298 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



lie morality ? Can we forget the baneful influence 
which exalted rank and eminent talent confer upon the 
loosest sentiments and most depraved conduct? As 
are the gods, such are the worshipers ; as the leaders, 
so the followers. One example of talented profligacy, 
displayed on high, as the favorite of the nation, the idol 
of the old and the model of the young, is a preacher of 
wickedness quite sufficient to neutralize a hundred ser- 
mons eloquently thundered from all the pulpits in the 
land. 

Of this latitudinarian principle that personal profli- 
gacy is to diminish no man's claim to public station, our 
public men have taken a most ample advantage. To 
what other cause shall we attribute the increase among 
our men in high station, and especially in our legislative 
and Congressional bills, of a spirit of unparalleled van- 
dalism ? What mean that outrage in language and that 
Imilyism in conduct that have transformed our high 
councils of state into a club of pugilists, where every 
other law is postponed to the law of fisticuffs ? Shall 
we be told these are but temporary ebullitions of pas- 
sion, from which we are to draw no inference against 
the permanent character? But what means this con- 
tinuity of outbursts, from session to session, during the 
last twelve years, if it be not a demonstration of a per- 
manent spirit of ruffianism? Shall we be told that 
these are, nevertheless, the turbulence of a few, not 
attributable to the great quiet majority? But what 
means that easy tone of conceded impunity, by which, 
not a majority, but a unanimity seems to say, in audible 
words, our character is sent to the bear-garden level, 
and our dignity is not worth an attempt at vindication ? 
Who, of all the heroes of our Congress rows, has been 
made a proper example of severity ? What ruffian has 
ever been expelled ? But we may be answered that 



The Christian Citizen's Political Duties. 299 



this great body is no indication of the real character of 
the people — the sound-hearted, the incorruptible peo- 
ple — that fountain of purity, sanctity, etc., etc. 

But when did a public fray ever prevent a Congress 
bully from a re-election ? It was repeated popular elec- 
tions that sent our Henry A. Wises and our Dr. Duncans 
to these annual exhibitions of national disgrace. It is 
at the ballot-box, then, that lies the fountain of corrup- 
tion ; it is in the rottenness of the people's heart. And 
when I say the people, I mean the politician's people; 
the people of the ballot-box ; whose character is most 
infallibly decided by its decisions. I mean, in fine, the 
fitrce mobocratic, who have originated the principle 
that recklessness of personal character and conduct 
shall deprive no candidate of a suffrage, and who have 
browbeaten the rest of community into a concession of 
this maxim. 

It seems to me to be not only the right, but the duty, 
of every man that has a conscience and a voice, to utter 
his reprobation, deep, strong, and unceasing, upon these 
national outrages upon decency and civilization, by the 
people's representatives within the people's council 
halls. It is not merely that the national reputation 
is degraded in the eyes of the cixilized world; though 
in sober sadness, this is most plentifully the fact. 
It is not merely that the national character becomes 
deeply corrupted and depraved ; though the amount 
of that result is appalling. It is that the very founda- 
tions of our free institutions are receiving an irrepa- 
rable shock ; that the very vital principles of repub- 
licanism :ire receiving their extinguisher. Wisely was it 
said, some years ago, by an orator within that house, 
" that no military chieftain could lay low the repub- 
lican institutions of this country until, upon that floor, 
republicanism had been rendered odious and con- 



300 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



temptible in the eyes of the people." That within the 
last few years a reign of terror has prevailed in our 
House of Representatives, that our Congress has become 
a by- word for turbulence, and a synonym for legislative 
mob, that this character is increasing and permanent, 
and fast tending to the ultimatum when senators must 
legislate with pistols in their pockets and bowie-knives 
at their sides, is just as certain, as that such must be 
the case, while the moral sense of the count ry is dor- 
mant, and every other sense so active and energetic. 

The political field being cleared, by the means I have 
described, of all moral interference, the evils that ensue 
when its place is usurped by self-interest, intrigue, and 
turbulence, are far more easy, and perhaps far more use- 
ful, than it is agreeable to trace. 

The field, then, being free, the campaign has now to 
be planned, and the battle to be fought. It is not mine 
to lift the veil and reveal the secret springs of power, 
in the conclaves and juntos at the fountain-head, from 
which starts the very first impulse of movement. But 
the perfection to which the hidden machinery has ar- 
rived is fully attested by the increased power of its 
action, and the increased volume, beyond all ratio, of 
its effect. 

In tracing the steps of those mighty qundrennial con- 
vulsions that sweep like a revolution over our country, 
the great purpose of which is to decide upon the pos- 
sessor of the nation, we find, of course, the central spring 
at Washington. And here the first great evil presents 
itself in the form of Congressional interference in the 
business of president-making. The purpose for which 
our national representatives are chosen is national legis- 
lation, and not presidential caucusing. The real busi- 
ness of the nation is neglected, while business with 
which these gentlemen have nothing to do engrosses 



The Cheistiax Citizen's Political Duties. 301 



their minds and time. Questions of the greatest inter- 
est are decided, not on their own merits, but with a 
view to political effect. Hence a tardy and neglected 
legislation through the earlier months of the session, 
and a most hasty and doubly negligent legislation at 
the close. And this evil is aggravated by the days after 
days expended in political harangues, in a style quite 
below the average level of our village newspapers. The 
immense expenditure of public money thus annually 
lavished is a consideration which would long since have 
aroused our mighty dollar-and-cent nation to rebellion, 
were it not the interest of politicians of both parties to 
soothe rather than to rouse such an agitation. It is 
even amusing to see how abuses, in which both parties 
of professional and salaried managers, as well as all 
who hope for such a portion, have an equal interest, are 
perfectly invisible to the keen eves of that mighty beast 
of burden, the mass of tax-paying unofhcials. We 
have, I suppose, regular arithmeticians, to cipher out 
for us the sum total which our paupers at home cost 
us ; but no informant is careful to tell us the terrible 
annual cost of the public pensionaries, who lounge and 
sport in our national infirmary of incurables. Never 
was a nation pretending to be free more severely taxed 
for a more useless purpose than are the subjects of King 
Caucus when obliged to foot the bill which our Con- 
gress is annually pleased irresponsibly to run up. 
Whether this taxation is not as irremovable as it is 
profitless, depends upon the questions whether human 
ingenuity can contrive a plan of relief ; and whether 
the people can ever awake to a reform of an evil, 
which both political partisanships are interested in 
preventing. 

In the first place, how shall a strong public sentiment 
be created, more powerful than law, pronouncing in the 



302 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



ears of our national legislators that they have no busi- 
ness with politics f How novel the paradox ! and yet 
what more plainly true ? By politics I mean the active 
agitation of, and the usurping interference with, the 
great question, who is to be our president ; and conse- 
quently, who are to be our entire set of officials, down 
frequently to our very street-cleaner. With this ques- 
tion Congress has no more right to interfere than our 
Supreme Court ; and it would be a blessing to the nation 
did public opinion impose upon them the same dignified 
reserve. If a political harangue from the bench would 
be extra-judicial, a political harangue in the House of 
Representatives ought to be extra-Congressional. While 
the present system continues, however, Washington 
will be the theater, and Congressmen the actors in the 
first scene of the political drama. 

In the second place, how shall reform not only confine 
the national legislature to its own business, but stay the 
propensity to voluminous speechifying and interminable 
sessions ? We answ T er, let our Washington legislators 
indulge in this amusement at their own expense, :.nd 
their game is up. Brother Jonathan is proverbially 
shrewd at a bargain ; how was he ever noodled into the 
folly of allowing a set of spendthrift servants of his to 
fix their own wages ? It is a perfect burlesque on his 
knack at driving a trade. No other class of official 
men, I believe, have the right to pocket, ad libitum, up 
to their estimate of their own value. It may be asked, 
how then should they be priced ? I answer, let no ani- 
mal in the market, at any rate, fix his own price. If no 
wiser plan can be adopted, let the vote of every district 
fix the price they will pay the w T orkman they select to 
do their job. To limit the long sessions (if I may pro- 
pose an expedient which will need no patent to secure 
my right of invention), let theui be paid more than hand- 



/ 



The Christian Citizen's Political Duties. 303 



somely the first four weeks ; and after that period, for 
each successive week, let the price be cut down one half; 
until by successive halvings they dissolve for want of 
pay, or else stay to try the infinite divisibility of matter. 

But whatever may be the plan which more practical 
reformers than myself could invent, my main purpose 
is to develop unflinchingly the evil. Congress is, at the 
present time, a great central planning and electioneering 
committee, supported by public money, whose ostensible 
but subordinate purpose is to make laws, but whose 
real and predominant business is to make presidents. 

Under such auspices the candidates having been 
arrayed, and the plan of the campaign having been laid, 
the agitators take the field and the surges of excite- 
ment begin to heave. All the apparatus of disturb- 
ance is set into operation to rouse the popular mass into 
wild and high commotion. Affiliated clubs, associa- 
tions, and central committees, the machineries of com- 
motion, start into being ; the press groaningly flings off 
its daily and weekly, regular and extra papers, pamph- 
lets, squibs, and essays. Stump oratory of all magni- 
tudes, qualities, and quantities, pours forth its cataracts 
— from the young maiden spouter to the crack spokes- 
man of the clique, and even up to itinerant honorable or 
right honorable, who humbles his senatorial dignity to 
pour upon a ragged miscellany of humanity the thun- 
der of his big guns, to reverberate through the nation. 
Around these noisy nuclei gather in wild clamor all the 
excitability of the country. The more select caucus, the 
pompous convention, the midday street meeting, the 
evening rally, the overwhelming mass gathering, rolling 
out the countless population of almost whole States at 
once, sweep over the nation their heaving billows of 
agitation. Amid these scenes the floating banner flares 
upon the eye-sight ; the notes of martial music intoxi- 



30i Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



cate the senses ; peals of artillery stun the reason, while 
the reeling majesty of Prince Mob is quickening its gen- 
ius or drowning its cares in flowing oceans of hard 
cider. The muse of democracy, official laureate of his 
drunken majesty, mounts her spavined Pegasus, and, 
with voice cracked in the effort, pours forth count- 
less ballads in doggerel that defy meter, and jingle 
on names that defy rhyme. And thus amidst the 
madness of his own revelries and the roars of his 
own hurrahs, does the rabble monarch, in his log-cabin 
council chamber, with his hickory-pole scepter, sway 
the government and decide the destinies of a great 
nation. 

Well may the reflective spectator of such a scene, ob- 
serving how great has been the increase of unthinking 
excitement in our political world for the last ten years, 
calculate that this is to be a great ruling cause to pro- 
duce a radical change for the worse, of national charac- 
ter. As the immense increase of the means of rapid 
locomotion keeps up a perpetual commingling and agi- 
tation of elements, and the lightning speed of commu- 
nicating intelligence increases beyond all measurements 
the transmission of excitements, the public mind is 
acquiring the habit that demands and lives upon it. 
The national activity is becoming more intense, the na- 
tional nerve is growing more spasmodic, the national 
mind is becoming more thirsty for stimulant. The 
great political caldron, ever boiling with the commo- 
tion of its heterogeneous elements, is ready to burst with 
its " bubble, bubble, toil and trouble." Lost to reflec- 
tion and calmness, the very creature of excitement, the 
w T hole nation is becoming as one great city — one tre- 
mendous Paris. 

A reflective observer will detect the skill with which 
the master managers are changing from their appeals to 



The Christian Citizen's Political Duties. 305 



the reason and the moral sense, and substituting artful 
impulses upon the passions and imagination. These are 
the days of cant-words and mottos, of doggerel couplets 
and cantering ballads. A good rhyme is better than a 
thousand reasons, and a well-raised hurrah, sent from 
one end of the nation to the other, is better than a 
library of arguments. 

Such an observer will also remark, that when the 
question is really brought to the masses, the military 
candidate is very sure of the highest favor. The minds 
of our voting population have not yet risen above the 
vulgar admiration of corporeal courage and gunpowder 
glory. Hnppy the candidate who has a rhymable name ; 
but to incur a homely name, associated with military 
exploits, Old Hickory, Old Tip, or Old Ironsides, is 
worth more to the possessor than the statesmanship of 
a Cecil, the diplomacy of a Talleyrand, or the oratory 
of a Chatham. Prince Mob has a pair of lengthy ears 
that hugely relish the braying of arms and battles, but 
have as little perception of intellectual glory as of the 
music of the spheres. Whenever our ultra-heroic poli- 
ticians shall have made our republican legislation suffi- 
ciently contemptible, when the restless turbulence of 
our mobocracy has rendered popular elections a weari- 
ness, when a war, foreign or civil, has surrounded some 
chieftain with military power and glory, then will this 
blind military mania bring on the consummation. The 
populace will gladly exchange the stale tumults of their 
own gatherings tor the more splendid parade of military 
and imperial galas ; and the calm thinkers will joyfully 
dismiss the turbulence of the myriad-headed tyrant, for 
the quiet sway of a single-handed despot. 

But these, I may be told, are the somber pictures and 
fearful forebodings of an alarmist. It may be so. But 
who will be so sanguine as to deny that there is like- 
20 



306 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



ness enough in the picture to justify, if not the loudest 
alarm, certainly the most serious inquiry after a remedy 
for present evils and prospective dangers ? 

I. And the first remedy is in the conservative power 
of sober public opinion. It is not by silent acquies- 
cence, or a hasty underrating of evils and dangers, that 
we can escape them. The very silence of moral rebuke 
gives license and boldness to the evil. There are thou- 
sands who are thoughtlessly swelling the amount of the 
evil, from very consciousness of its nature and magni- 
tude. There are thousands who act upon the principle 
that while they are to be strictly conscientious in other 
things, the election ground lies out of the territory of re- 
sponsibility. There are thousands of conscientious men 
who are aiding in giving overwhelming power to party 
organizations, and banishing moral consideration ; ready, 
perhaps, to join the paltry cry of Church and State, and 
in driving from the contest those who are more rigid 
than themselves in carrying conscience into politics. 
These act under the influence of a prevailing low sense 
of political morality, which they, in turn, assist in cre- 
ating. And yet they might easily, under a better influ- 
ence, rise to a higher and healthier moral tone. Let, 
then, every organ of the moral sense speak. Let every 
conscientious press speak ; without treading upon party 
grounds, let the pulpit and the Church speak. Let 
every sober, conscientious man speak. ]STo doubt oppo- 
sition enough will present itself, designed to overawe 
and suppress such expression, and secure the dominion 
of old silence. Let it come in any form it pleases, and 
meet it with a breast that shrinks not, and a tongue 
that falters not. 

IT. In the second place, it may be most seriously 
doubted whether the magnitude of the pecuniary rewards 
of political success is not one great cause of the viulence 



The Christian Citizen's Political Duties. 307 



of political contests. Were not the official salaries of 
our national government so large, office seekers would 
be fewer, their pecuniary expenditures would be less 
lavish, and the contest would become less selfish and 
mercenary, and more a matter of moral principle. It is 
with the funds drawn in the form of salaries from the 
public pocket that our elections are rendered corrupt 
and violent. Men can afford to expend largely and 
fight fiercely when they expect to be paid richly. The 
people pay the expense of heating the iron poker which 
is thrust into their own vitals. 

I know that our political brethren, of both parties, 
will bring the most strenuous argument against a prop- 
osition so fatal to their independent vocation. Large 
salaries in our general government, we are told, are 
necessary to command the talent of the country, to sup- 
port the dignity of official station, and to prevent the 
rich from engrossing offices of which they alone could 
bear the expense. But we are far from believing that 
the present mercenary principle procures any special 
superiority of either talent or probity for the political 
profession. When we compare the talent of the polit- 
ical with that of the ministerial or literary profession, 
for instance, the amount of it in the latter may be fairly 
pronounced quite equal, and, of moral purity, far supe- 
rior. Yet large salaries, according to the political 
standard, were not necessary to call a Mason, a Beecher, 
a Channing, a Bascom, into their profession ; men who 
may fearlessly be compared with the greatest political 
intellects of our country. There are some postmasters 
who, without any great value of natural or acquired 
qualifications, receive higher salaries than the occupants 
of our highest literary stations, namely, our college pres- 
idents ; yet these ill-paid stations could command their 
D wights, their Waylands, and their Fisks ; and even 



308 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



our professorships, their Sillimans, their Anthons, and 
their Stuarts. 

The pretended necessity of large salaries to support 
the dignity of official station in our general govern- 
ment is a self-created difficulty. The disproportion- 
ate amount of political compensation has created that 
standard of expensiveness which has rendered great 
salaries requisite. By this means our national capital 
especially has been rendered the center of national ex- 
travagance, the annual rendezvous for national dissipa- 
tion ; where courtly vice has played pranks of dissolute 
folly quite rivaling the licentious capitals of Europe. 
In consequence, the standard of demanded style in the 
country is raised ; and every other profession is forced, 
in self defense, to heighten its level. If our national 
salaries had been ten times greater, the standard would 
have been ten times more prodigal, and the necessity ten 
times more pressing. Bring the political down to the 
ordinary standard of intellectual professions, and you 
take away a large share of the selfish turbulence of poli- 
tics. You destroy in a great degree that bane of our 
country, a separate political trade; you melt it back into 
the mass of the country, and every man becomes, as he 
should be, politician enough for his country's good. 
Office seekers will not invent much in politics when 
even success will pay poorly, and the control of our 
elections would not be engrossed by the sordid and 
mercenary few, but would become the common quiet 
business upon principle of the whole people. And 
thus, if I have spoken with some unceremonious disre- 
spect of the politician's be-praised and be-worshiped 
people, when the real interests of the genuine people 
come in question, I may be found a little too democratic 
for modern democracy itself. 

III. In the third place, there should be a unanimous 



The Christian Citizen's Political Duties. 309 



protest against the bestowment and withdrawal of civil 
offices as rewards for political adherence and punish- 
ment for political heresy. Proscription for opinion's 
!>ake is most violently denounced by politicians in all 
others, but practiced by none so unblushingly as by 
themselves. It is the open and avowed rule of action. 
The founders of our glorious constitution could not 
have dreamed that the whole amount of executive pat- 
ronage, increased incalculably, and still increasing, by 
the vast enlargements of our Union, could, in so short a 
time, be regularly transformed into a great system for 
the control and suppression of free opinion. The gen- 
eral public silence upon the subject and the easy acqui- 
escence of the reflecting community are but another 
proof of the mighty power of the political profession. 
True, indeed, each party can pour forth strains of ex- 
quisite pathos when it becomes the victim of proscrip- 
tion ; but the tragedy becomes all farce when the spec- 
tator knows that the victim only wants power to be- 
come the executioner. True, also, now and then some 
tame paragraphs upon political violence are published ; 
but these sound much like the trite moralities uttered 
upon intemperance before the bold and earnest appeals of 
the temperance reformation went forth. Where is the 
reformer who, with trumpet peals, can wake a nation's 
heart upon this subject ? Violent, of course, must be 
our national elections when it is known that the selec- 
tion of our president decides, more or less directly, 
the possession of tens of thousands of official stations 
and salaries, civil, military, naval, and ecclesiastic- 
al, high and low, from the secretaryship of state 
down to the sweepership of our streets. These count- 
less salaries are one immense fund for the forma- 
tion of political legionaries and the payment of political 
service. The fund which once existed in England for 



310 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



the purpose of bribing political partisans, advancing 
public morality has abolished; but it cannot be doubted 
whether posts and salaries conferred as a quid pro quo 
for political adherence, are not as true a bribe as the 
money without the office. It ought to brand any 
administration or opposition with infamy, that it can 
make an unblushing appeal, not to the pure, unbought 
republican sense of the people, but to the ambition and 
cupidity, the fear and the interest, the pride and the 
pockets. And not merely does this system subsidize 
its myriads of office holders, but the ten times ten thou- 
sand hosts of office expectants, who are thus arrayed in 
one vast standing army, bound, by ties of moneyed in- 
terest, to sustain any measures of their party or admin- 
istration. 

IV. In the fourth place, every honest man who has a 
right to vote, has no right to withhold his vote. If there 
be any excuse for these immense national agitations, so 
systematically pursued, it is that it is impossible to call 
out every class, and every individual of every class, 
without slinking every part of the social system. Each 
party, to gain the splendid prize, must exert every 
nerve to fix the wavering, to rouse the sluggish, to find 
the concealed, to discipline the scattered, and to suborn 
the corrupt. Above all, there is a large reserve class of 
men who love not our politics, who are too refined for 
their grossness or too pious for their dissoluteness. 
Such men, in ordinary contests, are sure to stay at 
home ; and it is not until they can be fairly drowned out 
with the deluge of enthusiasm that they can be brought 
to action. Hence these very quietists are, in a great 
degree, responsible for the very turbulence they con- 
demn. There are thousands of conscientious men who 
suppose that the elective franchise is, indeed, a noble 
right, but its exercise a mere matter of option. Others 



The Christian Citizen's Political Duties. 311 



esteem it a matter of mere convenience, and will conde- 
scend to take the trouble only when a sent carriage 
brings them to the polls, a vote is put into their hands, 
and they are only required to hold it between thumb and 
finger. Others there are who deem it a moral merit to 
omit to vote. " I have as little to do," says such a one, 
" as any other man, with politics or politicians ; I leave 
them to settle their own dirty intrigues in their own 
way ; " and he looks as righteous as if he had performed 
a work of great merit, instead of committing a breach 
of duty against himself, his country, and his God. 

And what is this vile business called politics ? It is 
the deciding upon the government and destiny of our 
country ; the settling the question frequently of war 
and peace, of freedom and oppression, of religion and 
irreligion ; the fixing whether our lives and property 
shall be secure, and our very homes sacred. It is use- 
less to reply that it is not at every election that ques- 
tions so momentous as these are decided. Many are 
the elections, since my remembrance, in which ques- 
tions like these have been involved. And those very 
elections at which these vital questions are directly de- 
cided, are frequently indirectly controlled by the previ- 
ous contest. So that every great election will, more or 
less, involve, in the long run, the most sacred interests 
of the whole country. 

It is, therefore, every man's duty to vote, and to vote 
on every general occasion. Solon made it penal in 
Athens for any freeman to neglect to vote, for he knew 
the tendency of political power to be engrossed by the 
turbulent and bad. I have no scruple to say that it 
ought to be law in our own country, that the man who 
does not vote ought to be penally treated. I would at 
least double his taxes, so that if he refused to serve his 
country in one way, he should do it in another. 



ol2 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 

Every honest man has a claim upon the vote of every 
other honest man. Every honest voter owes to me the 
duty of giving his vote; and I have a right to say to 
such a man, " Pay me what thou owest. Your vote, 
sir, is my right, as it is my safety ; it is my only protec- 
tion against the usurpers that are engrossing the pos- 
session of the country. It is your omission and negli- 
gence which combine with the intrigue and turbu. 
lence of others to overwhelm all we hold dear, in ruin- 
Ruin yourself, if you will, but you have no right to ruin 
me." 

Nor is it that quiet, honest man's duty to fling in a 
silent vote for the candidate imposed, by the political 
profession, upon him. It is his duty, in the spirit of 
holy calmness, to make his assuaging influence felt in 
the nominations. Would the great body of the now 
retired and secluded absentees but come forth and pos- 
sess the ground, it may not yet be too late to make 
politics cease to be a special profession. Would they 
carry thither the spirit of unyielding sobriety and 
purity, the increasing recklessness of partisan immoral- 
ity may be checked, and the ballot-box may be a great 
interest wh ere with a great people shall regenerate itself. 
If they will but vote regularly and conscientiously, not 
by impulse but by principle, those great convulsions 
that sweep like a revolution over the country will 
become unnecessary for the purpose of bringing out 
the moral strength of the country. Then will our 
great elections be, as they should be, the solemn, majes- 
tic act of a mighty people, in the presence of the God 
of nations, discharging the highest responsibilities of 
self-government, the holiest rite of freedom. 



The Christian Week and Sabbath. 313 



THE CHRISTIAN WEEK AND SABBATH. 

'~Eyev6jU7]v kv Ttvevfiarc kv rr\ Kvpcanri rjfiepa. 
"I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day." — Rev. i, 10. 

A study of the sacred numbers suggests from its 
own stand-point a train of thought embracing a view 
of the argument upon the week and the Sabbath as a 
creational and permanent institute, and so a part of the 
Christian dispensation. 

Our Scripture motto refutes, at start, the doctrine, 
that under the Christian dispensation all days are relig- 
iously alike. There is one day in seven, incontroverti- 
bly, which inspiration honors, as it does not any one of 
the other six, with the title, the Lord's day. Upon this 
passage, therefore, we shall found our argument : First, 
that there is in the New Testament a sacred day and 
a Christian week. Second, that this sacred day is not 
to be identified with the temporary Sabbatism of Juda- 
ism ; and is, instead, identical with the perpetual and 
universal Sabbath of the creation and the decalogue. 
The first of our propositions will stand against those 
who maintain that there is no New Testament Sab- 
bath ; and the second against those who maintain the 
permanent Sabbatism, even in the Christian dispensa- 
tion, of the Jewish Saturday, and also against those 
who affirm that all Sabbaths are a temporary and 
local institution. If there be a Christian sacred day, 
distinct from Judaism, the authority of our Chris- 
tian Sabbath is as wide as the world and as lasting as 
time. 

It is self-evident, and, I believe, generally undisputed, 
that no other than the day of the Lord's resurrection is 
or could by eminence be called by St. John in thh Was- 



314 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



sage the Lord's day. If this were doubtful, we prove it 
as we do the meaning of all other words, by contempora- 
neous or permanent use. St. John lived at the close of 
the first century ; and it was in the year A. D. 101 that 
Ignatius declares that Christians "keep the Lord's day 
on which Jesus rose from the dead." In the primitive 
days the test question put to the Christian martyrs by 
the persecutors was, Dominicum servasti ? — " Hast thou 
kept the Lord's day ? " And the reply was, Christia- 
nus sum • intromitere non possum — "I am a Christian; 
I am not able to omit it." From that day to this, in no 
other sense has the phrase Lord's day ever been use 1 
but to designate the day of the Saviour's resurrection. 

But we have here established not only a Christian 
sacred day, but what, though generally unnoticed, is 
scarcely less important, we have an established Chris- 
tian week. This Lord's day is the sacred one in a cycle 
of seven. It is the sacred close of a secular six. And 
let it be noted that the week is a sacred and religious 
institution. Unlike the natural divisions of year and 
month, the sacred division of seven days is simply a 
commanded religious institute, founded to commemorate 
the creation, and preserved for the sake of the Sabbath. 
If, then, under Christianity we have a Christian week 
perpetuated, it can be for no other purpose than still to 
commemorate the work of God and still uphold a weekly 
sacred day. 

Of the continued observance, under the Christian dis- 
pensation, of week and sacred day, we now adduce the 
New Testament proofs. Upon the day of the Saviour's 
ascension — the first Lord^s day of our dispensation — 
four times did our Saviour reveal himself. During the 
six following, now secular days, he withdrew his pres- 
ence ; but again was he in their midst on what, this 
same John takes care to inform us, was the first day of 



The Christian Week and Sabbath. 315 



the week. " And after eight days again his disciples 
were within, and Thomas with them : then came Jesus, 
the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, 
Peace be unto you." John xx, 26. This visitation 
measured off for us, indisputably, the first Christian 
week. 

That from this time the Christians had a stated day 
— in itself nearly a self-evident fact — is clear from the 
ordinary phrases, When ye come together into one place, 
etc. 1 Cor. xi, 20. Not forsaking the assembling of your- 
selves together. Heb. x. 25, Come unto your assembly. 
Jas. ii, 2. That this was not on the Jewish Saturday y is 
evident from the fact that St. Paul, who is our main au- 
thority for the stated meeting, does, as we shall more 
fully see, condemn the observance of the Jewish Sab- 
bath. That it was on the first day of the week, is evi- 
dent from the fact that this is nowhere otherwise stated; 
and from the fact that the phrases which indicate that 
there was an ordinary assembling, indicate, also, that 
the first day of the week was an ordinary day. 

On the day of Pentecost — which was the first day of 
the week — the Jewish Sabbath having been over- past 
and slighted, "they were all with one accord in one 
place" — Acts ii, 1 — and then took place that effusion of 
the Spirit, which was, in fact, the founding of the dis- 
pensation of the Spirit. St. Paul — Acts xx, 6, 7 — comes 
to Troas on Monday; he waits till the next Sunday, ap- 
parently without public preaching, and in order that he 
could preach on that day. " And upon the first day of 
the week, when the disciples " — as ordinary matter of 
course — " came together to break bread, Paul preached 
unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and contin- 
ued his speech until midnight." This waiting of the 
preacher for Sunday — the customary character of the 
described coming together — the urgency of the preacher 



316 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



fully to discharge his missionary duty before his next 
day's departure, all show that the Lord's day was a most 
fixed and stated day for the Christian worship at Troas. 
In confirmation of this, according to the primitive cus- 
tom of making benevolent contribution at their assem- 
blies for Christian worship (see Justin Martyr's Apol. i, 
67), St. Paul directs the Corinthians, " As I have given 
order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye. Upon 
the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him 
in store . . . that there be no gatherings when I come." 
1 Cor. xvi, 1, 2. That the public collection was to be 
taken at their congregation on the Lord's day is evident; 
for, first, the whole transaction was ordered in order that 
the collection might be completed and done with against 
Paul's coming; and, second, no motive could exist for 
naming a particular day but as a proper and convenient 
day for collection at a regular public meeting. Thus 
we have inspired evidence, that the stated meetings of 
Christian worship under apostolic direction at the four 
distant points of the Christian world, namely, Jerusa- 
lem and Corinth, Troas and Galatia, took place, not on 
the condemned Jewish Sabbaths, but on what inspira- 
tion pronounces to be the Lord's day. 

Finally, St. John was in the Spirit on the LorcVs 
day. This day, therefore, on which Christians met 
for weekly worship, is inaugurated by inspiration as 
a sacred day. The day of worship — the day of resur- 
rection — it is His day. And as its return is in the reg- 
ular revolution of seven days, so the weekly cycle is 
recognized as a Christian period. Christianity is not, 
therefore, without its week, nor that week without its 
special day. 

Such is our purely New Testament argument. But 
the argument from the earliest Christian writers in favor 
of a primitive and universal observance of the Lord's 



The Christian Week and Sabbath. 317 



day is overwhelming. Says the epistle of Barnabas, 
" We keep the eighth day as a joyful holyday, on which 
day, also, Jesus rose from the dead." "No longer Sab- 
batizing" says Ignatius, A. D. 101, "but living a life 
according to the Lord^s day, upon which our life rose 
from the dead." " On the day called Sunday" says 
Justin Martyr, A. D. 147, "there is a meeting in one 
place of all the Christians who live either in the towns 
or in the country;" and then he proceeds to describe 
the usual Christian worship. Irenseus, Bishop of Lyons, 
A. D. 167, says, " On the Lord's day every one of us 
Christians keeps the Sabbath." Theodoret, speaking of 
a party of Judaizing Christians, the Ebionites, says, 
" They keep the Sabbath according to the Jewish law, 
and sanctify the Lord's day in like manner as we do." 
The father of Christian history, Eusebius, says, " That 
Christ, by the new covenant, translated and transferred 
the feast of the Sabbath to the saving Lord's day, in 
which the Saviour achieved a work superior to the six 
days' creation." Such are the unanimous and uncon- 
tradicted testimonies of all antiquity, that the Lord's 
day was observed by the whole Christian world from 
the apostolic age. If the Jewish Saturday be still Sab- 
bath, the whole Christian Church of all ages, with the 
most insignificant exceptions, is guilty of profanation 
and worthy of death. If Sunday be not the sacred day, 
the whole Christian world, and especially the purest 
part, has been involved in a voluntary Jewish supersti- 
tion. And so we think that our argument, historical 
and scriptural combined, furnishes, to say the least, a 
reliable presumption that Sunday has been observed as 
a sacred day, not only from the time that John pro- 
nounced it the Lord's day, but from the time that by 
the resurrection of Christ it became the Lord's day. 
We next affirm, 



318 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



II. The Christian sacred day was different from the 
transient Judaic national and ritual Sabbaths. 

Under Moses's law, Israel kept, on the same day, a 
twofold Sabbath. By the institution of the week, with 
its closing Sabbath, Israel commemorated the great 
week of the creation and the divine rest which followed 
it; and hence this is assigned in the decalogue as a 
fundamental reason of keeping Sabbath. But laid ad- 
ditionally upon this was a Sabbatism which, 1. Com- 
memorated the national emancipation and independence 
of Egyptian bondage. " Remember that thou wast a 
servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy 
God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand 
and by a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy 
God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day." Deut. 
v, 15. It was also, 2. To be a sign of covenant between 
God and Israel. "It is a sign between me and you 
throughout your generations." 3. The national punish- 
ment of death was inflicted. " Every one that defileth it 
shall surely be put to death." Exod. xxxi, 13, 14. 4. The 
Jewish Sabbatism was to be kept with a strictness pos- 
sible only in certain latitudes. " Ye shall kindle no fire 
throughout your habitations upon the Sabbath day." 
Exod. xxxv, 3. 5. The week of days was involved into 
a higher week of years, and a Sabbath of the seventh 
year was nationally appointed. Lev. xxv, 4. The year- 
week was involved into a still higher week of seven 
sevens of years ; so that at the end of the seven-year 
week of forty-nine years, the fiftieth year was at once a 
jubilee and a Sabbath year. Lev. xxv, 10. And then it 
is to be noted that the Jewish word Sabbath, by an 
extension of conversational language, became extended 
so as to include, perhaps, every holy d iy. 

But it must follow, from the very nature of the case, 
that such a S.ibbath as this — a weekly celebration of 



The Christian Week and Sabbath. 



"319 



Jewish independence — a sign between God and the Jew- 
ish nation — to be kept with a rigor which would limit 
it to a peculiar climate — to be punished with a severity 
peculiar to a particular code — accompanied with a round 
of septennial and semi-centennial Sabbaths must be na- 
tional and temporary. Even if occurring on the same 
day of the week with the creational Sabbath, this super- 
added Sabbath upon a Sabbath is bound to perish with 
the dispensation to which it belonged. 

But it is by no means certain that the Jewish Satur- 
day-Sabbath is identical in day with the original crea- 
tional Sabbath. So far forth as there was a week, that 
week celebrated indeed the work of the creation; and 
inasmuch as there was a Sabbath at the close of that 
week, certainly the ineffable Sabbath repose of the pri- 
mal Creator was thereby celebrated. The decalogue 
first given to the Jewish nation did indeed command 
the week to be still preserved and its seventh day Sab- 
bath to stand at its close. But the decalogue did not 
prescribe on which day the week should begin or end. 
The weekly wheel was still to roll; but it was not 
named at which spoke of the wheel the count was to 
commence. Those who maintain that the abolition of 
the Jewish Sabbath must be the abolition of the crea- 
tional, are bound to show their identity in day. * The 
burden of proof is with them; but the weight of proof 
is against them. The sacred narrative of the introduc- 
tion of the Jewish Sabbath contains a plain implication 
of the revival of a decayed commemoration, the very 
day of which was forgotten. The Jews are obliged to 
be informed, at the first mention of Sabbath unto them, 
as a thing unknown. " To-morrow is the rest of the 
holy Sabbath." Exod. xvi, 23. "To-day is a Sabbath 
unto the Lord." Verse 25. It appears also plain that 
upon the fourteenth day previous the Jews had been, 



320 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



under the divine direction, engaged in a wearisome 
march. It is also evident that the day was selected to 
commemorate the day of deliverance from Egypt. And 
as in commemoration of that event a new month was 
made to begin the year, so a new day was probably 
made to close the week. The abolition, therefore, of 
the Jewish Saturday-Sabbath does not include the abo- 
lition of the creational Sabbath. 

Now, the Jewish Saturday-Sabbath was abolished. 
"Let no man therefore judge you," says the apostle, 
" in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or 
of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days: which are a 
shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ." 
Col. ii, 16, 17. In regard to this and parallel passages, 
which we shall soon quote, two things are to be proved; 
namely, first, They do not involve the non-observance 
of the Lord's day of the Christian week; second, They 
do involve the abolition of the Jewish Sabbath; and, 
third, They consequently , involve the abolition of the 
Satu rday- Sabbath. 

First. That Paul does not intend to forbid the obliga- 
tion to keep a Christian sacred day, is plain from the 
fact that it is against the relics of Judaism that he is 
inveighing. He would strip the Christian converts of 
circumcision, new moons, and all the badges of the old 
ritual. " Ye observe days, and months, and times," says 
he to the Judaizing Galatians; "I am afraid of you, lest 
I have bestowed upon you labor in vain." But certain- 
ly the keeping a Christian Lord's day would be rather a 
badge of Christianity than of Judaism, and could in- 
volve no fear. The Lord's day was nnti- Judaic. 2. It is 
plain that St. Paul did respect the Christian Lord's day 
at Troas, and did command the observance of a " day," 
both to the Corinthian and Galatian churches; namely, 
a day of public collection, and that day the Lord's day. 



The Christian Week and Sabbath. 



321 



His condemnation of the observance of " days " no more 
condemned the observance of the Lord's day than of 
one's birthday. 3. It is plain, from the early Christian 
writers, that in the New Testament the word Sabbath 
had temporarily sunk to be a sort of Jewish partisan 
word, to designate the Jewish Saturday, and that in es- 
pecial opposition to the new Lord's day. Of the Ebion- 
ites, for instance, who were the remains of the very 
Judaizers whom Paul condemns in these passages, The- 
odoret says, " They Sabbatize as the Jews, and sanctify 
the Lord's day as we." " Not Sabbatizing ," says Ire- 
naeus, "but living according to the Lord's day." The 
condemnation, therefore, of the partisan Sabbath gen- 
erally coincided with an observance of the Christian 
sacred day. Neither St. Paul nor Irenseus forbade the 
Lord's day, when they, in the then common meaning 
of the word, condemned Sabbaths. 4. Just so a Puri- 
tan might say to a set of men relapsing into Romanism, 
" O ye are beginning to keep holy days; I am afraid of 
you ! " Should the Puritan be told that he himself kept 
a holy day in the Christian Sabbath, he might reply 
just as St. Paul might have replied, Very true, but very 
impertinent; for it is plain that whatever may be the 
abstract meaning of the words, I had not, in condemn- 
ing holy days, the Christian Sabbath at all in my mind, 
and, therefore, did not condemn it. 5. Finally, if St. 
Paul really condemned and ignored all days, he stands 
in opposition to St. John, for he recognized and observed 
a day, even the Lord's day. And we may add, he 
stands in opposition to the Lord himself, who revealed 
his glorious person to St. John in the very act of being 
" in the Spirit," and recognizing the Lord's day. So far, 
then, from making void the Christian Lord's day, St. Paul 
confirmed it. He abolished its rival. He swept away 
the Jewish rubbish to make way for the Christian edifice. 
21 



322 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



But we are, second, to prove that he did abolish the 
Jewish Sabbath. Yet this seems hardly necessary, for 
we have already abundantly shown the Jewish Sabbath 
absolutely perished with the Jewish dispensation. And, 
although the word Sabbaths, in the time of the apostle, 
was undoubtedly extended so as to include other sacred 
days, yet it can hardly be supposed that he did not 
mean to condemn in the word Sabbath the very day 
which the word specifically designated. Moreover, to 
show that the weekly Sabbath was intended, he addi- 
tionally specifies the other sacred days which the word 
sometimes included. It is plain that he classed the Jew- 
ish Sabbath with circumcision as a null instit ution, which 
could be innocently observed only when it did not involve 
some relapse into Judaism. Writing to the Romans he 
considered it a matter indifferent. Writing to the Gala- 
tians he denounces it as a symptom of Jewish apostasy. 

III. We are to prove that the abolition of Jewish 
Saturday Sabbatism involved the aboliiion of all Satur- 
day Sabbatism. On this we may remark, ]. As we 
have before shown that Saturday can furnish no proof 
of having been the very day of the creational Sabbath, 
the abolition of its Judaic claims leaves it on a level with 
the rest of the week. 2. St. Paul's condemnation of 
all observance of the Jewish SabbatJis condemned all 
Christian observance of the day on which they stood. 
For he condemns not a particular mode of keeping, but 
all keeping of the day whatever. He knows no Chris- 
tian way of keeping the Jewish " day." 3. St. Paul so 
condemned the "day" that his converts were justly en- 
titled to consider it, as no doubt they did consider it, 
as no Sabbath and no sacred day in any sense whatever. 
They did, without a rational doubt, feel not only enti- 
tled but bound to sink it to the ordinary rank of the 
other secular days of the week. They were fully enti- 



The Christian Week axu Sabbath. 



323 



tied to labor at their ordinary business during its hours, 
and to hold that, so far forth as it was concerned, no 
Christian Sabbath existed. 4. All this is amply con- 
firmed by the fact that the early orthodox Christians 
seem not only to have sunk its claims, to have overpast 
it with neglect in order to hold their convocations on 
Sunday, but even to have set keeping the Lord's day in 
orthodox opposition to Judaic and heretical Sabbatizing. 

On the whole, if we have in this article attained our 
object, we have proved that there is a Christian sacred 
day; and that it is not Saturday, and can, therefore, be 
no other day than Sunday. The perpetual and univer- 
sal Sabbath, its only inheritor, must be the same sacred 
day; and so Sunday is the Sabbath of the creation and 
decalogue. 



McDOXALD OX SPIRITUALISM. * 

It cannot be doubted that a great change has been 
forced upon the public mind during the last thirty years 
in regard to the reality of apparent supernatural phe- 
nomena. So numerous are the well-attested statements 
of sensible facts, that no skeptic, no savant, who has at- 
tempted to take them in hand, has been able to so man- 
age them with creditable success as to place them to the 
public mind in clear consistency with the old Saddusaic 
skepticism of the days of the Locke and Hobbes philos- 
ophy. Shall we deny, it is asked, the truth of the 
statements of the sensible facts ? Most persons will 

* Spiritualism Identical with Ancient Sorcery, New Testament Demon- 
ology. and Modern Witchcraft, with the Testimony of God and Man 
against it. By W. McDonald. 12mo, pp. 212. New York : Carlton 
& Porter. 



824 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



have no respect for the judgment that denies the truth 
of the narrative of the phenomena occurring in the 
"Wesley family ; of the clairvoyant perceptions related 
by the philosopher Kant in regard to Swedenborg ; of 
the appearance of the deceased father of the Duke of 
Buckingham, as narrated by Lord Clarendon ; of the 
phenomena occurring in the house of Rev. Mr. Perreaud, 
to which the philosopher Robert Boyle gave his cre- 
dence, and of which Mr. Wesley says, " I do not think 
any unprejudiced men can doubt the truth of this nar- 
rative." The cheap philosophers who either with a 
broad grin would sneer at these facts, or with a solemn 
scientific "gravity would make you split," would ignore 
without explaining them, may be safely reckoned as 
ciphers in the equation against Wesley, Kant, Claren- 
don, and Boyle. And when we have admitted even 
these instances, the doctrine of Hume, Baden Powell, 
M. Comte, M. Renan, and the whole school, that no 
supernatural phenomena ever crosses our human expe- 
rience, is at once at an end. Their pretended negative 
law of experience is contradicted by the positive facts 
of experience. It follows, also, if these particular 
instances are admitted, that while we are still justified 
in rejecting all other narratives not based on the most 
irrefragable evidence, yet numerous instances of the 
kind do truly occur, and when well attested, it is a 
skepticism running into credulity that rejects them. It 
then follows that a spirit-world does exist ; the soul 
survives the body ; the demoniacs of the New Testa- 
ment are a reality, and we are not shut in to fruitless 
metaphysics, unsustained by actual facts, to prove the 
truth of our higher nature to the mind that doubts the 
Scriptures.* No sharp criterion line can indeed be 

* Mr. Wesley expresses very decided, perhaps extreme, opinions 
upon this point : i4 It is true, likewise, that the English in geneial. 



McDonald on Spiritualism. 325 



drawn between the credible and incredible, just as no 
such division line exists in the ordinary events of life. 
And so in the mass of modern spiritualistic phenomena, 
while a fraction of actually supernatural or rather sub- 
ternatural facts may be admitted, it is easily seen that 
that class of facts may be used as a nucleus upon which 
a set of profligate jugglers may superimpose an indefi- 
nite amount of trickery. For us, on account of such 
jugglery, to reject the clearest facts attested by unim- 
peachable witnesses where no deception can exist, is, in 
fact, to make ourselves the victim of that jugglery. 

Our biblical thinkers, perhaps, as Wesley thinks, make 
a mistake in not recognizing the illustration which this 
modern spiritism, or rather demonism, sheds upon the 
demonology, sorcery, and witchcraft of both the Old 
and New Testaments. Mr. McDonald has shown how 
striking is the accordance. And it thus appears that in 
all our human history the powers above and the powers 
below have ever been manifesting themselves to human 

and indeed most of the men of learning in Europe, have given up all 
accounts of witches and apparitions as mere old wives' fables. I am 
sorry for it ; and I willingly take this opportunity of entering my sol- 
emn protest against this violent compliment, which so many that 
believe the Bible pay to those who do not believe it. I owe them no 
such service. I take knowledge that these are at the bottom of the 
outcry which has been raised, and with such insolence spread through- 
out the nation, in direct opposition not only to the Bible, but to the 
suffrages of the wisest and best of men in all ages and nations. They 
well know (whether Christians know it or not) that the giving up of 
witchcraft (the operation of malignant or infernal influence) is, in 
effect, giving up the Bible ; and they know, on the other hand, that 
if but one account of the intercourse of men with separate spirits be 
admitted, their whole castle in the air (Deism, Atheism, Materialism) 
falls to the ground. I know no reason, therefore, why we should suffer 
even this weapon to be wrested out of our hands. Indeed, there are 
numerous arguments besides which abundantly confute their vain 
imaginations." 



326 



Essays, Rea^iews, and Discourses. 



perceptions. There is a whole system of divine mani- 
festation, appearing in the angels, the seers, the proph- 
ets, and the sacred writers, culminating in the incarna- 
tion, as recorded in the Holy Records retained by the 
true Church. And by the light of these same records 
we descry a lower antithetical order of manifested 
beings, the sorcerers, the dealers with familiar spirits, 
the demoniacs, culminating in the visible appearance 
of Satan at the temptation. Thus, earth is the battle- 
ground of the supernal and the infernal, disclosing 
themselves by glimpses, yet disclosing themselves too 
palpably and too perpetually to be ignored or reason- 
ably denied. 

Though a sharp line cannot, as we have said, be infal- 
libly drawn, dividing the truth from fiction, yet a con- 
stant line may be drawn to regulate our credence, sepa- 
rating the credible from the incredible, and in fact shut- 
ting off the large mass of narratives into the incredible. 
We are not then liable to the objection that if you ad- 
mit any thing you must admit the whole, and are thus 
precipitated into a boundless credulity. If, for instance, 
a man, however sensible, shall tell us he had seen a ghost, 
we should question the soundness of his health and advise 
him to consult his physician ; for nothing is more settled 
than the occurrence of such hallucinations from a disor- 
dered system. If a sensible man should tell us that the 
ghost not only appeared but conversed with him, the 
case w r ould be stronger, being sustained by two bodily 
senses. But if the apparition discloses to one man an 
important fact, unknown to the living world, but found 
on investigation to be true, there could be no solution 
which does not admit of communication from a mind 
disconnected with a material body. When, in addition, 
as in the case related by Clarendon, the apparition ap- 
pears repeatedly in the same manner, communicates the 



McDonald on Spiritualism. 



327 



unknown fact to authenticate his reality, and furnishes 
as the main object of his appearing a prediction of a 
future fact, incalculable by the human intellect, yet 
strangely verified in an immediate future, there can be 
no rational doubting that the apparition was actual, and 
that a genuine revelation was received from a disem- 
bodied spirit. There are, indeed, very few cases thus 
amply authenticated ; and therefore the great mass of 
such narratives may be wisely rejected, not as always 
being certainly untrue, but as being most certainly not 
proved. Different minds will draw the line with differ- 
ent degrees of stringency. 

But if we admit demoniac manifestation, how shall we 
distinguish the supernal from the infernal, the miracle 
from the lying wonder? Just as you distinguish the 
firmament above from the black earth beneath. Just 
as you distinguish a good, holy man from the lying, 
profligate debauchee. Just as you distinguish the Holy 
Church of all ages with its Holy Scriptures from the 
followers of sin, death, and hell in the world. Adhere 
by faith, prayer, and holiness to the good, to truth, to 
God, and you belong to the Supernal. Consort with 
the sorcerer, the necromancer, the medium, the leaguer 
with demons, and you go with the Infernal. And here 
the Holy Scriptures are our chart and guide. The 
Church of God with its central Son of God is the one 
great organic miracle ; all antithetical to that belongs to 
the demoniac. 

How truly the modern spiritism terminates in clear, 
unmistakable demonism, this work of Mr. McDonald 
most amply demonstrates. He narrates the first ap- 
pearance of the developments of our day in the Fox 
family, in 1848. He enumerates the twelve different 
kinds of mediums, with some of their evidences and 
claims. He then traces the same phenomena, essen- 



328 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 

tially, through history, sacred and secular, ancient and 
modern. He shows the identity of the so-called " Spir- 
itualism " of our day with the various forms of sorcery 
and diaholism of past ages. He exhibits the clear ac- 
cordance of this identification with the Bible view, and 
the striking illustration thence derived of Scripture 
truth. He furnishes some of the most decisive instances 
in modern times of supernatural manifestation. Finally, 
he traces the awful demoralization to which this mod- 
ern sorcery tends, to doctrines the most detestable, to 
devil-worship, to all lasciviousness and uneleanness. 
For an illustration of botli the reality and the deprav- 
ity of the system the book is very effective. Some of 
our churches have, we believe, in former times, been 
infested with these damnable nuisances ; and to their 
pastors we recommend an examination of these pages. 



THE RESURRECTION.— 1 Cor. xv. 

The resurrection is the most momentous transition in 
the entire eternal history of a human being. Assuming 
its glorious character, it is the completion of the re- 
demption, the consummation of the exaltation of our 
nature, and the perfected and immortal blossoming of 
the flower of our blessed humanity. It is a fact not re- 
vealed by nature but by Scripture. Philosophy has 
usually, even in maintaining the immortality of the 
soul, denied the resurrection of the body. Yet the doc- 
trine of the resurrection has been obscured, if not denied, 
by many even evangelical divines, who have not adhered 
to the strictly Scripture doctrine of the resurrection of 
the same body. We see not how there can be a resur- 
rection of the body unless the same body, for substance, 



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329 



that died revives again. If the new body be another 
substance, and not the same identical body, then a body 
rises, but not the body. It is another body, and the 
body has died to live no more. There is, indeed, a rising, 
but not a rising again. There is a surrection, but not 
a -Resurrection. The plain doctrine of Scripture is, 
that the body that dies relives — the same particles of 
matter in a new organization. The sameness is in the 
substance — the material particles that compose the body. 
The alteriety or difference is in the phenomena of the 
new organization. 

There is a chemical fact which may precisely illus- 
trate the Scripture doctrine. A piece of charcoal is a 
very unsightly and inglorious thing. It is unattractive 
to the eye, and almost valueless for any use. Yet sci- 
ence affirms that its material — carbon — is identical with 
the diamond that glitters in the coronet of royalty. A 
reorganization, consisting simply of a change in the 
mutual relative position of the particles, would trans- 
form the blackest of lumps to the most brilliant of gems. 
This is not so much an illustration as an instance. It is 
a fact of the same nature as the resurrection; namely, 
a glorification by the reorganization of the same sys- 
tem of particles. The sameness is in the substance; 
the alterity is in the organization and its consequent 
phenomena. 

The difficulties urged by objectors are spurious and 
unnecessary. There is the arithmetical objection, which 
maintains that the substance of the earth, extending far 
below its surface, would not supply matter enough to 
furnish the bodies of the human race, from the time of 
the creation to the present day. This objection, though 
often and confidently quoted, is, as any one may see by 
making the calculation, stupendously false. The whole 
human race, thus far, might all lie without mutual con- 



330 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



tact upon the surface of the State of New York. The 
metaphysical objection, that our bodies are continually 
changing, and, therefore, could not all rise at the resur- 
rection, mistakes our doctrine. The doctrine is, that 
the body that dies is the body that relives. The resur- 
rection body is, therefore, the historical continuance of 
oar present body. It is a historical sameness. The 
metaphysical objection, that divine power can scarce be 
conceived able to keep the particles of each body sepa- 
rate from the aggregate of every other body, may be 
answered by many a parallel fact. Secret miracles of 
this kind pervade all nature. Such, in fact, are all the 
laws of nature ; the organic miracles of a lurking Om- 
nipotence. Not a millionth part of these laws has yet 
been discovered by man. Such a mystery of miracle — 
a hidden law regulating apparent accident — is the pres- 
ervation of the equality in number of the sexes. Not 
less so the law that prevents the intermingling of differ- 
ent races. Nay, every natural law around us — the at- 
traction of cohesion, that holds each object to its indi- 
viduality — expansion and repulsion, and all the laws 
that regulate material action, are but instances of the 
same sort. Not a whit more wonderful than these 
would be a secret law preserving the separateness of 
each dying body, and gathering the ashes into a myste- 
rious unity to form the vehicle of the future spirit. 
The theories, therefore, so artificially constructed of 
germs, newly created bodies, and corporeal accretions 
gathering on the soul, are as unnecessary for a true phi- 
losophy as they are contradictory to a sound interpreta- 
tion. We ignore all hypotheses. The doctrine we 
maintain is neither hypothesis nor theory, but the sim- 
ple gathering up of the teachings of Scripture into a 
brief statement. 

On any theory which denies the material identity of 



The Resurrection. 



331 



the body, can we explain the fact that the graves are 
opened, and that the spirit goes to their brink to resume 
and occupy its future tenement? " Marvel not at this," 
says our Saviour, "for the hour is coming, in the which 
all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall 
come forth; they that have done good, unto the resur- 
rection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the 
resurrection of damnation." John v, 28, 29. This pas- 
sage is inconsistent with the germ theory; for certainly 
a germ in the grave cannot hear the voice of the Son 
of man. It is inconsistent with the creation theory and 
with the accretion theory. It teaches a resurrection 
without any theory. 

The fifteenth chapter of first Corinthians is doubtless 
the key passage upon this subject; and to that chapter, 
relied upon as it often is for the opposite view, and 
misunderstood, as we think it, by the great run of com- 
mentators, we make our appeal as containing our view 
of the Scripture doctrine. In order to understand the 
writer, in this as in every other case, it is necessary for 
us to understand his stand-point. And for this purpose 
it is necessary for us to state, first, with what class of 
persons he was arguing, and, second, what difficulties 
and objections he was meeting. 

And with regard to the first of these two points, St. 
Paul was not arguing with heathens or Gentiles, but 
with a regular part of the Corinthian Church, whose 
faith was defective on this point. This is plain from 
the arguments which he adduces, in all of which he as- 
sumes the fundamentals of the Christian faith. He 
first states witli great fullness the evidences which he 
had "delivered " unto them, that Christ had risen from 
the dead; and then opens the direct argument upon the 
resurrection in an interrogative form. " Now if Christ 
be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some 



332 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



among yon that there is no resurrection of the dead? " 
Verse 12. He, then, in argument identifies the certain- 
ty of our resurrection with that of Christ ; negatively, 
by maintaining that a denial of our resurrection denies 
his (13-19), and affirmatively, by showing how a risen 
and glorified Christ would carry his people triumphant- 
ly through. Verses 20-28. He then resumes the argu- 
ment negatively, by showing how all w r ho labored, were 
baptized, or suffered for Christ, did all in vain, unless 
there be a resurrection. Verses 28-32. In this whole 
argument St. Paul, assuming the resurrection of Christ 
as the central point, ignores even immortality itself as 
a matter of hope, except as based upon our resurrec- 
tion, involved in Christ's. It is plain, then, that he is 
arguing with Christians. 

What class of Christians they were will appear from 
a settlement of the second query concerning Paul's 
stand-point ; namely, w r hat was the objection he was 
meeting? Their objection is thus stated: "How are 
the dead raised up, and with what body do they come ? " 
It is plain that their difficulty was in regard to the iden- 
tification of the body. They understood St. Paul's doc- 
trine of identity to be, that this same substance should 
rise with the same organism, and the same qualities of 
weakness, dishonor, corruption, and mortality now be- 
longing to it. 

This furnishes the clew to the particular party in the 
Corinthian Church who doubted the resurrection. They 
were not Jews, for Jewish prejudice was in favor of the 
resurrection. They were Gentiles, and probably had 
some tinge of gnosticism ; namely, they tended to a be- 
lief of the natural evil of all matter and the perfect 
baseness of all corj>oreal existence. This contempt for 
the body, at first, would wear an air of high spiritual 
sanctity. But, on the other hand, it assumed a most 



The Resurrection. 



833 



licentious form, by maintaining that there was nothing 
wrong in abandoning a vile body to the basest uses. 
To all this St. Paul opposed the doctrine of the san<-tifi- 
cation of the body (1 Cor. vi, 19) as a temple of the 
Holy Spirit, and based even that doctrine on the doc- 
trine of the resurrection of the body. These persons, 
therefore, in the Corinthian Church were warned by the 
apostle (33, 34) to beware — to be awake — for, upon 
this point, evil communications, or doctrines, would not 
be merely theoretical, but would corrupt good manners, 
or morals, and work out licentiousness of life. 

Such a party, then, will demand of the adherents "of 
Paul" (I Cor. i, 12) "with what sort of body, forsooth, 
does the raised saint come ? I understand your doctrine 
to be that he comes with the same body, which is a most 
shameful notion, as it loads the saint forever with cor- 
ruption, shame, weakness, and mortality." Now, what 
is the apostle's answer? His answer occupies the entire 
chapter. 

His entire answer may be compressed into the follow- 
ing sentence. The identity of the body does not imply 
the retention of its imperfections; for, as there are va- 
rieties in the same species, so there may be a difference 
in the same body in its different states ; that is, though 
the same it may be different. It may be the same ma- 
terial, but a new and more beautiful organization. It 
may be the same number of the same particles; yet the 
new> organism may exhibit a new set of qualities and 
aspects, just as the same number of the same particles 
in a charcoal may exhibit a new set of qualities and as- 
pects in its diamond state. 

Paul's opponents argued that flesh forsooth was flesh, 
and so, even in its resurrection state, necessarily vile 
and mortal. To this he first replies, that as a seed sown 
first dies and then reappears in a new God-given renewal, 



334 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



so the body must die out of its present fleshly, mortal 
state, and reappear in a like renewal. Verses 31-38. 
"Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, ex- 
cept it die: and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not 
that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of 
wheat, or of some other grain: but God giveth it a body 
as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body." 
In this passage he denies that the resurrection of the 
same body implies the resurrection of its fleshly base- 
ness. This dies away like the seed, and the body rises 
in a glorified appearance like the flower. 

It is true that, botanically, the same entire particles 
of the seed do not compose the new flower. Hence 
many are tempted to find a germ theory here. But the 
apostle speaks, be it well remembered, only of the visi- 
ble facts, obvious to the popular eye, to which the flower 
is the seed come up. He ignores every thing below 
ground. He makes no subsoil allusions. His illustra- 
tion cuts off the taunt that his doctrine of the sameness 
of body, in point of substance, implied sameness in visi- 
ble qualities. He held unquestionably that the body 
buried and the body raised would be like the seed sown 
and like unto its flower blooming. 

He further refutes his opponents by showing, even 
from visible nature, how wide the varieties even of flesh 
and other materialities. "All flesh is not the same 
flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another 
flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds. 
There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: 
but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of 
the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the 
sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory 
of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in 
glory." Therefore, such being the varieties of fleshly 
and other material existences, let it not be imagined 



The Resurrection. 



335 



that the body cannot arise with some new character of 
glory and beauty. 

That this is his meaning will appear from the appli- 
cation of the previous illustrations which now follows. 
For that the following verses is the application of the 
previous analogies appears from the initial " so." And 
mark, 1. The " it " of the several verses, meaning the 
body, is constantly the same " it " before the resurrec- 
tion and after the resurrection. It is the same it in the 
mortal and immortal state — the same substratum for the 
two successive sets of qualities, corruption aud incor- 
ruption, etc. The substratum is the same; the phenom- 
enal qualities are different. The carbon is the same in 
both the charcoal and the diamond conditions. "So 
also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in cor- 
ruption, it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dis- 
honor, it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness, it is 
raised in power: it is sown a natural body, it is raised 
a spiritual body." 

Upon the body, in its earthly state, the qualities are 
corruption, dishonor, weakness, naturalism; on the same 
body, in its heavenly state, the qualities are incorrup- 
tion, glory, power, spirituality. " There is a natural 
body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is writ- 
ten, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the 
last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit 
that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is 
natural; and afterward that which is spiritual." 

In this paragraph the apostle, having mentioned the 
terms natural and spiritual as applied to body, inter- 
rupts his train of parallelism in order to illustrate these 
two terms. There here arises a difficulty to the purely 
English reader from the fact that there are wanting 
terms in the two languages synonymous in all their 
uses. The word natural, selected by our translators as 



336 Essays, Reviews, and Disco urses. 



an antithesis to spiritual, is very vague. It fails to aid 
the reader to fix, by contrast, the precise meaning of 
the epithet spiritual as applied to body. Hence many 
readers are tempted to understand it to mean a body 
made out of spirit, which is in itself a contradiction. 

To understand these terms, let us premise that the 
ancient philosophers divided the nature of man into 
spiritus, anima, and corpus, or spirit, soul, and body. 
The spiritus is his highest nature allying him to God; 
the anima — whence our word animal — is his lower im- 
material nature, his animal soul, by which he is allied to 
the brute creation. The body, of course, is the material 
machine. Now, for the epithet natural, if we substi- 
tute animal — as an adjective derived from anima — we 
shall get the apostle's exact meaning. Then the animal 
body and the spiritual body will be respectively a body 
suited as a vehicle for the anima, and a body suited to 
be a congenial vehicle for the spiritus. So that by these 
two terms the apostle very suitably characterizes our 
body, before and after the resurrection, as adapted to 
its respective objects. 

Paul further illustrates our terrene animal body by 
an allusion to the Scripture. God breathed into man 
the breath of lite, and man became a living soul ; that 
is, a living anima — a living animated being. He doubt- 
less became something higher, but this is all the present 
words say. Now, this view of the first Adam, as a liv- 
ing anima, the apostle immediately takes and sets in 
humbling contrast with our second Adam, who is a life- 
giving, that is, a resurrection-bestowing spiritus. This 
he subsequently completes by saying that w r e now bear 
the image of the one, hereafter of the other. The dif- 
ference between the body in its present and its future 
state is expressed: 1. By the antithesis corruption — in- 
corruption. Now, corruption, marring, and decay arise 



The Resurrection. 



337 



from the fact that the cohesion between the particles is 
so imperfect that they give way, and so disorganize and 
decompose. Incorruption is secured if the particles are 
so organically fixed that they may be more impangible 
than adamant, and yet as elastic, undecaying, and inde- 
structible as an organism of electric fluid. Such might 
well be called a spiritual body, as adapted to be the ve- 
hicle of the most powerful spiritus. 2. By the antithe- 
sis of dishonor and glory. Our bodies are in dishonor 
from ugliness, animal processes, and innumerable neces- 
sities and circumstantials by which man becomes offen- 
sive to his own natural senses. Glory implies perfect 
beauty, deliverance from all base compulsions, and splen- 
dor, perhaps, outshining the sun. 3. By the antithesis 
of weakness and poioer. Such is the weakness of our 
present bodies that we are often unable to lift our own 
weight. Near half our time we collapse into sleep. 
We totter in childhood and limp in age. Power implies, 
perhaps, the strength and rapidity of a thunder-bolt. 
4. Naturalism, or animalism, is the antithesis to spiritu- 
alism of body. The former implies its congeniality and 
adaptation to base material uses; the latter, its congeni- 
ality with the high uses and state of spiritual existence. 

"The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second 
man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such 
are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, 
such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have 
borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the 
image of the heavenly." 

In this paragraph the apostle resumes his parallel and 
argument, to illustrate how the resurrection of the same 
body may consist with two very different sets of bodily 
qualities and conditions. For the two different organ- 
isms are to be stamped with the impress of two very 
different types; namely, of the first, earthy Adam, and 
22 



338 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



of the second, heavenly Adam. The same we who 
have borne the former image, will be stamped with the 
latter image. But each different image is stamped upon 
the same material. His opponent must not, therefore, 
charge upon his doctrine of the resurrection of the same 
body, that it implies the resurrection of the base flesh- 
liness; for that base fleshliness is the transient image 
of the first Adam, which must give place and be trans- 
figured to the image.of the glorified Christ. The whole 
is then condensed into the following concise summary: 
" Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot 
inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption 
inherit incorruption." 

'By flesh and blood here is meant that very base flesh- 
liness which Paul's opponent charged upon the resur- 
rection of the same body. For the phrase "flesh and 
blood," in Scripture, signifies not the pure and absolute 
material of our frames. It always implies corruption 
and mortality embodied in flesh and blood. Gal. i, 16; 
Eph. vi, 12; Heb. ii, 14. It is here explained in the 
very next clause as synonymous with, or, at least, im- 
plying, corruption. The thirty-ninth verse, indeed, im- 
plies that resurrection body may be flesh, but not the 
same flesh. It may come, within the range of God's 
varied creative power, a kind of flesh ; it may possess a 
blood ; and yet not be, in the low and ordinary sense of 
the phrase, flesh and blood. Nay, it is to rebut the 
charge made by his gnosticising brethren against Ids 
doctrine of the resurrection, that it implied the resur- 
rection of flesh and blood, that he levels his whole argu- 
ment, and especially this verse. 

The npostle next further illustrates his position by 
the case of those who are alive at the second advent. 
They, at any rate, pass through no germ or vegetation 
process. Their living bodies have no other change, but 



The Resueeectiox. 



389 



simply that they put on immortality, etc. " Behold, I 
show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we 
shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of 
an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, 
and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall 
be changed. For this corruptible must put on incor- 
ruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So 
when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, 
and this mortal shall have put on immortality," etc. 

Here, then, is a clear case — a perfect poser to all who 
deny the resurrection of the same body, by simply pass- 
ing through a glorifying change, by which it puts on 
incorruption and immortality. 

Having closed our discussion of the subject, as treated 
in this chapter, we submit, in addition, the following 
points: 

1. The views we present are not a theory of the res- 
urrection; but the doctrine itself of the resurrection. 
The so-called theories are not theories of a resurrection, 
but theories against a resurrection. They are vegeta- 
tions, ascensions, accretions, developments, substitu- 
tions, but not resurrections. They do not fill up in 
meaning the terms which embrace a resurrection, and 
are only forced into a phraseology by a false fit. Had 
theirs been the true, original doctrine, that doctrine 
would never have naturally been clothed in the lan- 
guage now existing. If the believers of these theories 
will but see things as they are, and call them by their 
names, they will acknowledge themselves to be deniers 
of the resurrection of the dead. 

2. Nor let it for one moment be supposed that this 
doctrine is merely speculative, without moral value or 
practical effect. Momentarily it may be so, but in the 
long run far otherwise. St. Paul opposed this doctrine, 
not merely to a heretical error, but against a licentious 



3^0 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



tendency. It was on this point that he bid the Corinthi- 
ans awake to righteousness; for on this subject evil in- 
culcations would corrupt pure morals. The doctrine of 
the resurrection of the body is opposed to that Gnostic 
abhorrence of matter as in itself simple, which, as expe- 
rience shows, first effloresces into a high-flown spiritual- 
ism, and soon collapses into the most abandoned sensual- 
ism. On the contrary, the doctrine of the resurrection 
of the body is the foundation of the doctrine of the 
sanctification of the body. It is a basis of corporeal self- 
respect and decency, in opposition to filthy asceticism, 
monastic self-torture, and sanctimonious debauchery. 

3. The Scriptures seem to have taken special care of 
this doctrine, not only by clear statements, but by visi- 
ble examples. For to omit the texts in the Old Testa- 
ment, and to pnss lightly over the instances of Enoch 
and Elijah, translated bodily to the skies, how plain a 
pre-manifestation of the resurrection have we in the 
transfiguration, in which the body went into its resur- 
rection state, and came to its earthly condition again ! 
And then we need again only to allude to the case of 
those who shall be alive at the resurrection day, who, as 
the apostle show*, simply undergo the " change " of 
taking on immortality upon the mortal. 

4. The language of the apostle, " this corruption 
shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on 
immortality,'' plainly means that the very person of the 
apostle then writing would receive upon itself the in- 
vestment of immortality. Nor is it any reply to this, to 
say that his body may have undergone several complete 
organic changes before that glorious time. The true 
doctrine only implies that the body is historically the 
same. If my body is to cross the Atlantic twenty years 
hence, it will be a body historically identical with my 
body of the present moment. If my body shall die 



The Resurrection. 



341 



twenty years hence, it will be historically the same 
body. If my body shall have a resurrection twenty 
centuries hence, it must also be the same body historic- 
ally. That resurrection must take the body where 

LIFE LEFT IT AND CARRY ITS HISTORY ON. It must take 

its particles into organic unity, and rescue it from 
change or substitution for evermore. If it take a germ, 
a lump of the back-bone, or the outlines of the nervous 
system, the historic sameness is nullifi d, and the eter- 
nal thread forever broken. If the only resurrection be 
the investiture of the soul with a vapory accretion, to 
be called, forsooth, a spiritual body, there is neither 
resurrection, nor body, nor sameness, nor any thing else 
than the figment of a splendid dreamer. 

Finally, the resurrection of the body has been, with 
great unity, confessed and professed by the universal 
Church of all ages and all lands — Greek, Roman, Syriac, 
and Protestant. The Church lias done so, neither un- 
consciously nor inconsiderately. It has done so with 
full purpose against all the arguments of heresy, and 
with determined vigilance against all its maneuvers. 
"Nor let modern supporters of opposite theories one mo- 
ment imagine that their notions are new or original, or 
that they are any steps in the march of mind, or any 
original conception of modern genius, or any special 
feather in the cap of the nineteenth century. They 
are stale, old heresies, imported from oriental and pagan 
philosophy, opposed to the doctrines of the old Jewish 
Church, repudiated as false and immoral in the New 
Testament, tried and condemned in spite of their most 
subtile sophistries by the Christian Church, and rejected 
universally and perpetually. Such being the case, let 
us hold fast in good faith the venerable profession of 
the Apostles' Creed, " I believe in the resurrection of 

THE BODY." 



842 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



THE GKEAT PHYSICIAN'S ANODYNE. 

AN EXEGESIS OP JOHN XIV, 1-10. 

1 Let not your heart be troubled : ye believe in God, believe also in 
me. 2 In my Father's house are many mansions ; if it were not so, 
I would have told you ; for I go to prepare a place for you. 3 And if 
I go and prepare a place for you, I come again, and will receive you 
unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. 4 And whither I 
go, ye know the way. 5 Thomas saith unto him. Lord, we know not 
whither thou goest; how know we the way? e Jesus saith unto him, 
I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the 
Father but by me. 7 If ye had known me, ye would have known my 
Father, also: from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. 

8 Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father, and it suffieeth us. 

9 Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and dost 
thou not know me, Philip ? he that hath seen me hath seen the 
Father; how sayest thou, Show us the Father? 10 Believest thou not 
that I am in the Father, and the Father in me ? the words that I say 
unto you I speak not for myself: but the Father abiding in me doeth 
his works. — {Revised Version.) 

Our dying Saviour's valedictory to his apostles at 
the final supper unfolded both the darkness and glory of 
their destiny in most impressive terms. Compare it 
with a similar discourse of Socrates with his pupils, as 
given by Plato, and we see the immense inferiority of 
a philosopher's wisest utterances attained by the human 
intellect to the supreme mastery of " the Son " over the 
mysteries of the unseen. He had foretold the apparent 
ruin of all the hopes of the apostles ; dismay was deep 
in their hearts and dark on their faces ; and then he 
unfolds the rich consolations which their trust in his 
divinity affords them. It beautifully commences with 
a soothing sentence of assurance to their ears : " Let 
not your heart be troubled." He points to the demon- 
stration of the certainty of his assurances from his being 
trustworthy, not on account of his profound wisdom as 



The Great Physician's Anodyne. 343 



a philosopher, but from his authentication by the Father, 
as divine. Let us trace this view in the present passage. 

Verse 1. Why is "heart" in the singular, and not 
plural? We may imagine three solutions: 1. It may 
be a mere verbal accident without significance. And 
this seems to be the view of the great body of commen- 
tators, inasmuch as uone of them have noticed the fact. 
2. It may have designated the collective hearts of the 
apostles as one; and so it would symbolize their pro- 
found Christian unity. Or, 3. It may be an individu- 
alizing word, symbolizing that each apostle — nay, each 
disciple of Christ in every age — may lay claim to the 
consolation as belonging to him. We prefer this last 
interpretation. The breadth of the basis which our 
Lord lays under his then present apostles is expansive 
enough to furnish standing ground for us all. Each 
one of us may claim a share in it as addressed to his 
oio?i " heart," and say, I will not be " troubled," as there 
is an eternal mansion of glory reserved on immovable 
foundations for me. 

And next, how could the evangelist make Jesus for- 
bid their "heart" to "be troubled," when he tells us 
(chap, xiii, 21) that the "spirit" of Jesus himself was 
"troubled?" My answer would be that the apostles' 
trouble was a factitious, baseless, and self-interested (I 
will not say selfish) trouble. Their trouble was, lest 
their visionary earthly kingdom should be dissipated 
to thin air : his troubles arose as the awful image of the 
traitor's sin and crime loomed into near view. Such a 
trouble in the " spirit " of Jesus is the feeling of the 
divine Spirit himself, and so was a divine trouble. The 
question thirdly arises, Is the first " believe " of the two 
here indicative or imperative? And on this question 
the most eminent of the commentators of the Church 
are arrayed on opposite sides. The imperative render- 



344 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 

ing makes Jesus enjoin belief in God and himself alike. 
The indicative makes faith in God a basal reason for 
faith in Christ, for Christ is authenticated by God as 
his Son. And that this latter was the Lord's real mean- 
ing we are convinced by the words of the ninth and 
subsequent verses. In the person of Jesus there was a 
visible indwelling God that identified him ; and so if 
they, as disciples of Moses, believed in Jehovah, they 
were bound to " believe " when they thus saw the pres- 
ent Jehovah incarnate. As, on an infinitesimal scale, 
the insect of ages ago is seen in the transparent amber, 
so on an infinite scale the divine (as divine in the mi- 
nutest spot as in the whole universe) is seen visibly 
enshrined in the transparent person of Jesus. And 
being thus divinely authenticated as divine Son, as Son 
he will tell them of the glorious "house" of his divine 
u Father," and of his and their inheritance therein as in 
the not distant future. Glory, and not ruin, lies in their 
immediate onward pathway. 

Verse 2. With a beautiful abruptness the Son, the 
Saviour, applies the heavenly anodyne for all their nerv- 
ous excitement. He at once strikes home — " my Father's 
house." There also are a "place" and a glory for which 
all these alarming events are but the necessary prepa- 
ration and condition. And this "house" is a roomy 
edifice. God's "house" may indeed be the universe, 
in whose immensity he dwells, perfectly filling its 
whole. But here his "house " is the more limited, yet 
most expansive, heavenly realm, the " kingdom of 
glory," in which all the holy beings of the world have 
their home. And that this is a most expansive "house" 
we may easily understand if we conceive the kingdom 
of glory to exist in the immensity that surrounds the 
whole starry system as the ocean surrounds an islet. 
God compasses the whole astronomic system of creation 



The Great Physician's Axodyxe. 345 



as immensity does. When we say that heaven is icp, 
and God is up, that word up points to beyond the stars. 
And as our earth is a globe, so those ups, like so many 
radii, shoot from earth's center in every direction, and 
pronounce that the kingdom of glory, like God him- 
self, surrounds the starry creation as a concave envel- 
ope. But as God not only pervades immensity, but also 
pervades to the center of starry space and to the center 
of each particular star, so also does the kingdom of 
glory. Not indeed in its fullness and literal occupancy. 
But we may believe that the inhabitants of the kingdom 
of glory can pervade by their voluntary presence all the 
secrecies of the starry domain. Gabriel in heaven shot 
from that high abode to our earth in very brief time. 
Dan. ix, 23. We talk of even our railroads and tele- 
graphs as annihilating space. Yet with how much 
more than a telegraphic rapidity could a glorified spirit 
ascend from earth to heaven — borne, perhaps, like Laz- 
arus, by angels ! 

Heaven, therefore, though not literally " close around 
us," is virtually nigh us. It is nigh us inasmuch as in 
the passage from one to the other the element of time 
nearly drops out, and the visitors from the supernal 
may move in throngs around us. Nor must we imagine 
that the kingdom of glory is a narrow margin around 
our starry system. As a definite realm, even a " house," 
we may suppose it organic in structure, and so need not 
identify it with all immensity of space. This concave 
envelope may have its outside as well as its inside 
boundary. Outside, through immensity, is the limit- 
less God, and what else we know not. Only know we 
that inside is the material creation. " Many mansions " 
are many apartments in the roomy "house," for the 
various classes of occupants, as thrones, principalities 
and powers, angels and archangels, seraphs and saints. 



346 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



Heaven is ever in perfect order. So this same John 
in the Apocalypse beheld a roomy house so vast as to be 
a palace, a capital, and even a nation.* It had its twelve 
gates for the orderly twelve tribes of the celestial Canaan 
to enter. The temple, as God's " house," represents the 
same truth. Its various courts were for the priests, for 
the men, the women, and even the Gentiles. But here, 
as we shall soon see, a new court is about to be pre- 
pared and opened, namely, for those redeemed by the 
sacrifice now about to be accomplished ; for those, that 
is, of whom the twelve were the harbingers. And so 
St. Paul (or as it is fashionable nowadays to say, "the 
author of the Book of Hebrews ") tells us (Heb. ix, 23, 24) 
that "the heavenly things themselves are purified" by 
that sacrifice, when that sacrifice is actually completed 
for those who come after that completion. f And that 
completion is just now to take place. 

"Mansions," or staying -places, sometimes implies sta- 
tions of a journey. And this might be interpreted to 
imply progress, advancement in heaven itself. And 
this progress is not contradicted by the permanence of 
their abode in heaven ; for heaven for them may have 
an immensity of range. 

When now our Lord in a sort of under-tone affirms 
that "if it were not so" he "would have told" them, 
it seems as if he discerned on some countenances a 
skeptical shade of expression, as soon vocalized by 
Thomas and Philip. He therefore condescends to as- 
severate. He bases himself on what they know to be 
his superhuman probity, and asserts what he knows they 
know, namely, that if a fatal overthrow of all their 
hopes is at hand, he, who had foretold so many fearful 
futurities as near, would not have concealed even that. 
Said a dying yet thoughtful worldling, " There is a great 
* See Whedon's Com., Rev. xxi, 16. f Ibid., in loco. 



The Gjreat Physician's Anodyne. 347 



comfort in believing that there was something more 
than human in Jesus of Nazareth." And confessing so 
much he must accept as true what that " more than 
human " one says of himself. And if he asserts the di- 
vine to be within him, then, especially if also the works 
of divinity are done by him, he must be believed. And 
this is the process of the argument of Jesus here. He 
first appeals to their perfect confidence in his perfect 
probity, and then appeals to his "words" and "works " 
(verses 11, 12) as the conclusive confirmation of his 
uttered claims. 

In this mansion "house" he is going to prepare a 
" place for " them. We render the repeated " I go " 
and "I come" of this discourse with a participle, I am 
going and I am coming, as expressive of continuity. 
See verses 3, 23, 28. This final "place" is not yet 
prepared "for "them. The "place" is locally in the 
region of the third heaven, where God resides. A 
space (for a "place" must be real space) is to be set 
apart and consecrated for the future occupation of the 
saints of the resurrection. This is made secure and 
revealed by the resurrection of Christ. The Old Tes- 
tament or pre-erucifixion saints in paradise, pure bodi- 
less spirits, were then for the first time assured by di- 
vine demonstration that they would ascend from para- 
dise to the higher glory in glorified bodily completion. 

It was to proclaim this news, as well, perhaps, as for 
other purposes, that our Lord in his disembodied state 
entered this paradise, the so-called intermediate state 
between death and the final resurrection. And so this 
consecration of "a place" for the New Testament 
saints, the saints of the Messiah's resurrection, shed 
a new glory upon paradise, and " prepared" that local- 
ity, .as part of the "place," too. For heaven and 
pnradise are partly distinct and partly identical. Par- 



348 Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



adise is, as it were, a portico ; not the "house," 
and yet of the "house." The term heaven is exten- 
sible to paradise, but not so properly is the term par- 
adise applied to heaven. Paradise is distinctively 
temporary. It will lose itself in heaven after the final 
resurrection, as hades merges into hell. Rev. xx, 14. 
And only once (Rev. ii, 7) is the word paradise ap- 
plied to the whole heaven after this merging and 
identification. The preparation therefore extends to 
the entire of our great future unseen. When it is 
popularly said of a departed saint, "He has gone to 
heaven," or by a self-consoling parent that he "has a 
child in heaven," we use perfectly allowable language. 
But that truly all saints at death ascend at once to the 
highest heaven, and that all sinners descend at once to 
hell (Gehenna), is unsound theology.* 

Verse 3. This departure is condition precedent to a 
happy return. " If I " am going — as sure as I depart in 
sorrow and ignominy — I will make return in joy and 
glory. And when is this coming " again " to be ? 
Some commentators say, at the final resurrection. But 
we must not add, with Meyer, that our Lord's words 
imply the idea that the final resurrection w T as close at 
hand. But that the coming here is not (like parousia) 
limited to the second advent is clear from its repeated 
use in this discourse in the sense of Christ's presence in 
the Spirit, and especially so by this same John in Rev. 
ii, 20. Other commentators refer it to the coming of 
Christ to the dying Christian. And as it is then that 
the taking of the human spirit to paradise occurs, this 
seems necessarily to be its initial fulfillment. Our 
English version obscures this fact by its neglect of 
accuracy in rendering the Greek tenses. The revisers 
have correctly rendered the Greek ; but we word it 

* See Whedon's Com. on 2 Cor. xii, 1-4; Eph. ii, 2, and iv, 10. 



The Geeat Physician's Anodyne. 



349 



thus : I am coming to you, and icill take you to myself. 
This taking " : you to myself" is then specific and gen- 
eric. Specifically it is begun by the taking the spirit 
at death to paradise ; generically it is completed by the 
resurrectional receiving of the reunited body and spirit 
to the highest heaven. Dear to the Christian heart is 
the thought that Jesus is present in spirit at his dying 
bed. Yet the more realistic view is, that, like Lazarus, 
the sainted spirit is conveyed by angels. And so in 
Charles Wesley's beautiful hymn he is bidden to 

u Go, by angel guards attended, 
To the arms of Jesus go." 

And the reception of that spirit by the corporeal Jesus 
into the paradisaic or lower heaven is expressed with 
equal beauty : 

•• Waiting to receive thy spirit, 

Lo, the Saviour stands above, 
Shows the purchase of Lis merit, 

Reaches out the crown of love." 

But when we consider the myriad numbers of ascending 
saints we shall doubtless conclude that "the arms of 
Jesus " in the above lines, like Abraham's bosom," is 
imagery. And so "his breast " in those other beautiful 
lines : 

" While on Ms breast I lean my head. 
And breathe my life out sweetly there." 

To the dying Christian a present Christ says, " To- 
day shalt thou be with me in paradise." And he will 
in paradise find Christ's pervading presence, not only 
spiritually but bodily. The throne of Christ at God's 
right hand is indeed in the transcendant heaven, yet is 
he effectively present through the whole, inclusive of 
paradise, as our President is present in all our America. 



350 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



To this beholding of Jesus by the eye of that glorified 
spirit, distance is no difficulty, Nor does the pure spirit 
need words, made of atmosphere, to exchange the pure 
thought with other minds. Nor does any barrier exclude 
Christ from perpetual visitations and extended residences 
there. For here, as in the highest heavens, the presence 
of this "myself" is the true bliss and glory of these 
blessed ones ; less here than there, but in both the full- 
est glory of which the spirits disembodied and re-em- 
bodied are capable recipients. Christ is the sun amidst 
his stars, without whom they are darkness and iceberg. 
And reciprocally their salvation and glorification were 
the joy that was set before him, for which he endured 
the cross. 

But it is said (Matt, xxv, 34), the kingdom is pre- 
pared for you from before the foundation of the world. 
How comes it, then, that here the place is not to be 
prepared for them until after the crucifixion ? Our reply 
would be, that the kingdom of glory is prepared for all 
the holy beings, including redeemed man, from before 
the foundation of the world. But the " place" in 
that kingdom is not prepared for the post-crucifixion 
saints, and not fully prepared for any saints, until after 
crucifixion. The kingdom is the " house," and that is 
eternal; the "place" of the redeemed is to be in the 
"house," and not to be completely prepared until the 
sacrifice that purchases it is finished. So this " house " 
of God, like the temple, was of old ; but the new court for 
the new class of occupants was now first to be prepared. 

Verses 4, 5. The "whither" of this departure, and its 
" way," they knew, because Jesus had told them. The 
" whither " was " to the Father " in the transcendent 
heavens ; " the way " was through the death of the 
cross. And now in Thomas's positive-negative inter- 
ruption the doubter seems to be a prompt denier. And 



The Great Physician's Axodyxe. 



351 



in point of space and distance his denial is true. By 
what route through space Jesus will go, to where of the 
heavens Jesus will arrive, he knows nut. Yet very 
probably he exaggerates his ignorance in order to draw 
out from Jesus a fuller unfolding of the future 3 . He 
truly desires an account of the route and the goal. 

And here is a basal faith in Jesus. He does " believe " 
that Jesus truly knows, if he pleases to reveal. 

Verses 6, 7. Jesus refuses to be turned from his track 
of thought, requiring the whole "believe in me" of 
verse 1. He will not be drawn from the rich spiritual- 
ity of the matter into a barren directory. He embodies 
the whole matter in his concrete self. Christ is Chris- 
tianity. Accept a whole Christ, and you have a full 
salvation. Ask you the " way ? " His crucified body 
is "the way." The "truth ? " His all-wise Spirit. The 
"life?" His life, the life of your life everlasting. 
Settle all this, and the topography may come in as a 
lesser afterthought. "To the Father," the transcend- 
ent goal, by literal ascent, or " to the Father," by spir- 
itual approach, he is the sole "way." Even the re- 
deemed who never heard of Christ are redeemed by 
him. And through, not "by," is the literal Greek. 
Through this living bridge, spanning the chasm, do we 
pass to the Father. " From henceforth " means not (as 
many commentators) from the time of the crucifixion, 
or the time of this momentous converse. " From hence- 
forth " means "from" the time of truly seeing Jesus as 
he is.* The true sight of God commences with the true 
sight of Christ. 

Verses 8-10. Thomas's doubt seemed to cover the 
things of the unseen realities, but Philip's doubt at first 
sight seems to be the doubt of the Atheist, who says : 
" I will believe in God when I see God." But it is not 
* See Whedon's Cojji., Rev. xiv, 13. 



352 



Essays, Reviews, and Discourses. 



of God's existence that Thomas doubts, but of God as 
the authenticator of Christ as God. Yet Philip doubt- 
less knew that the things seen by the spirit's eye, the 
eye of our highest intelligence, are far more sure than 
those seen by the fleshly eye. The fleshly eye, for 
instance, sees a machine which is truly constructed ac- 
cording to geometrical laws. The spirit's eye sees the 
laws themselves. The former, the machine, is transi- 
tory ; the latter, the laws, are eternal. And yet Philip 
forgot this when he asked for a fleshly sight of " the 
Father." He may, as Meyer supposes, have asked for 
a theophany such as Moses beheld (Exod. xxiv, 10), or, 
we may add, such as John saw in vision. Rev. iv. If 
so, he asked for the temporary, rejecting the permanent. 
"So long time with you" expresses not pathos (Meyer) 
but rebuke. It was a guilty superficiality which could 
see "so long" the divine in Jesus, and self-avowed by 
Jesus, without becoming permanently stereotyped with 
the impression that God was with him. The spirit's 
eye that has even once seen this Son hath seen the 
Father, too. " I am in the Father," as the flower is in 
the bud, to ba unfolded in power and beauty to the 
spirit's eye. " The Father in me," as the divine fire 
was in Moses's burning bush. " The words that I say 
unto you I speak not from myself," as the words of the 
bush were not spoken by the bush as his organ. They 
were the words of Jehovah authenticating the bush. 
Doeth " his works " as well as uttereth " the words." 
And if my " works " attest myself as superhuman, and 
so infallibly trustworthy, so my " words " attest me by 
direct declaration as divine. As, therefore, " ye believe 
in God," so do you "believe in me," authenticated by 
God. And when I utter words of assurance and conso- 
lation, "believe;" and, believing, "let not your heart 
be troubled." 



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